Like a Rolling Stone
by alicat54
Summary: Some little girls, when they are four years old, will be given a doll, and told to play house. Deanna Winchester was given her baby brother, and told to run our of the burning nursery. Connected drabbles for all seasons, more progressively AU as story continues. girl!Dean milti xover Dr.Who, Dark Angel
1. Chapter 1

...

...

...

Deanna

...

Some little girls, when they are four years old, will be given a doll, and told to play house. Those little girls will giggle and smile, and pretend to be mothers.

Marisa Deanna Winchester (once called Miss Dee by her parents) was given her baby brother, and told to run our of the burning nursery. From that day forwards she was more of a mother than any of the other little girls with their dolls.

...

When Deanna was ten years old, she threw out her last threadbare pink T-shirt, donned a binder and flannel, and insisted that everyone call her Dean.

She spent the next seven years convincing everyone that she was male.

John didn't seem to notice his daughter's transformation, other than to gruffly nod in approval at her shaved head and sturdy boots.

Dean sometimes wondered if her lack of blonde curls was what allowed her father to look her in the eye again; a feat he had not performed since she had turned eight and started to display some features of her mother.

When Bobby discovered her secret, completely by accident thanks to Sammy being a loudmouth, he discreetly took her aside to ask if she had researched the options available to her.

Dean realized where this was going when the old hunter began uncomfortably hinting that he knew some reliable doctors who specialized in helping people through transitions.

She cut him off in the middle of his promises to support emotionally her the whole way.

"Woah, Bobby, I don't want a dick!"

The hunter paused, flustered. "Well, then why are you costumed up like that, boy?"

She wobbled her shoulders (bulked out through hours of pushups, though not as much as she would like). "No one needs Deanna. She can't scare off bullies from her brother, and Dad won't let her go hunting." She met the hunter's eyes earnestly. "But Dean can."

Bobby sighed, something crumbled and sad behind his grudging acceptance.

He still made sure that Deanna found her way to a discreet woman's doctor located in South Dakota.

...

It wasn't until Dean met Cassidy when she was seventeen that she was once again appreciative of her sex.

"Oh," the teenage boy said, as they were entangled together in a broom closet and he noticed a few absent pieces of anatomy on his partner. "You're trans?"

Dean hesitated for half a heartbeat, drawing back from his lips. "It's easier to be a boy."

Cassidy smiled. "That's cool. I dated this guy once who didn't like to mention anything about plumbing, since he was pre-op, and I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable if we got serious."

They did get serious, and Deanna decided to exchange her binder for a sports bra.

...

The nomadic life of a hunter was difficult; infinitely more so for a young lady.

When Deanna realized she could make more money than simply hustling pool in a bar, she thought over it for the length of time it took to run out of pb&j. It wasn't like it wasn't something she would have done anyway.

So she packed a knife in her boot and a gun in her waistband, and made a point to steal the guy's wallet afterwards. You know, when they deserved it.

...

When Sammy left for Stanford, Deanna drove him to the bus stop.

John disapproved, of course, but he had always treated his daughter with either military precision or ambivalence. Only once did John ever berate her for being too emotional. Deanna would have born the diatribe with silence, but Sam had shouted back in her defense that John shouldn't yell at a lady during a hormonally trying part of the month.

Deanna had been mortified, especially since she wasn't on her period, thank you. The stitches just freaking hurt without pain killers.

However, John had clamped his mouth shut, looking all kinds of uncomfortable.

Deanna had hissed at Sammy for being a sexist jerk, but her little brother had only grinned in an enigmatic self satisfied manner.

After that, John never commented about his daughter's perceived weakness. In fact, he hardly ever seemed to see her at all.

It hurt, knowing her father couldn't look her in the eye due to his own emotional hangups, but Deanna enjoyed the perks of being a woman too much to compromise her identity again. She needed Deanna now, and Sam did too.

So, just as her brother was about to step out of the Impala and her life forever, Deanna roughly grabbed him around the neck in equal parts choke hold and hug.

"You call me when you get there," she growled gruffly. "And make sure you keep the damn windows salted."

Sam, anger fraying in the face of his sister's distress, patted her bicep. "I promise," he wheezed.

He didn't call of course, but Deanna knew that was more due to Sammy being Sammy, than him despising her.

Or at least, that was what she told herself.

...

Deanna liked Jess. In the five minutes she had met her, the girl had made Sam smile no less than three times. Therefore, Jess was golden in Deanna's books.

So, when Sam broke down, trying to smother his sobs in the motel pillow, Deanna simply sat beside him, and carded her fingers through his hair.

She didn't sing Hey Jude, that wasn't what he needed.

They woke up late the next morning. Sam's eyes were puffy from crying. Deanna had a crick in her neck from sitting upright, and her throat was sore from humming Kansas.

...

Hunting went as it always did. Monster of the week and a cold trail for their father.

Some stuck out more than others for being frightening, like the scarecrow or Bloody Mary. Others were memorable for just being odd.

Such as the swan diving professor case on that college campus. At the scene of the proverbial crime, the Winchester siblings interviewed their prime witness.

"Were you working that night," Sam asked affably.

"I was the one who found him," the blonde janitor smirked. "I just saw him come up here and..."

"What?" the taller man pressed.

"Well, he wasn't alone."

The Winchester's shard a look.

"You ever see her before or around?" Sam pressed.

"Well, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Mr. Morality brought a lot of girls up here."

Deanna scowled. "Sounds like a real douche."

The janitor wobbled his shoulders indiscriminately. "He got more ass than a toilet seat."

She snorted. "Well, some guys are just full of shit."

Gold eyes alighted on her consideringly, as the janitor chuckled. "You're not the only one who thinks so. There was an inquiry a few months back where some poor girl ended up expelled. Her whole life up in flames."

"Really?" Sam's joviality gained an edge as he considered the possibility of a budding witch's curse.

The janitor nodded. "Last I hear she moved to Alaska."

"I hear the odds are good, but the goods are odd up there," Deanna said.

The blonde smiled winked. "I think it depends on which goods are keeping you warm at night."

"I've always been flannel girl myself."

The janitor laughed again, until his pocket beeped. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. "Sorry, I've got to take this." He apologized, before stepping out of the office.

Sam punched his sister in the shoulder. "Stop flirting with the suspects."

Deanna scowled at him. "What, so not I can't even look at a janitor?"

"Not while I'm in the room."

...

Later at the motel the siblings attempted to compile their notes, but kept running into roadblocks.

Sam screeched and slammed his laptop closed. "Dee! I thought I told you to stop looking up 'Sexy Business Biweekly' on my laptop!"

His sister poked her head out of the bathroom. "What? I didn't!" her expression changed to thoughtful. "Or, at least, I cleared the history."

"Yeah, well, now my laptop has a virus!" He grimaced. "And is full of dicks."

"Oh, un-bunch your panties, Samantha."

A sharp knock to the motel door stalled any further arguing. Deanna pulled on her flannel and answered it.

An inhumanly cheerful kid in a red bell boy's suit smiled cheerfully at her. "Here's a candy gram for you~"

Deanna blinked slowly as the singing delivery boy thrust a box of chocolates into her arms, before scampering off. She blinked again and looked down t the box. It contained the really expensive liquor filled chocolates imported from some non-English country which Deanna was sure she would never under no circumstances be able to afford normally.

Shrugging, she ripped the delicate wrapping open and stuffed a dark chocolate miracle into her mouth, nearly moaning as pleasure melted over her tongue. Then-

"Bleagh!" she spat out the candy into the trashcan. "Coconut!" She perused the box. "They're all coconut!"

Sam laughed vindictively. "Serve you right."

Then the slow dancing aliens made an appearance, and the Winchesters were left scratching their heads.

They called in Bobby, who upon arrival, promptly whacked the both of them on the back of their heads.

"Idjits," he rumbled. "You're dealing with a Trickster."

Sam ran a hand over his face. "Right, so what do we do?"

A knock rapped against the motel door, interrupting the hunter's planning.

"Here's a candy gram for you~" sang out the red suited bell boy.

"Oh for the love of-" Deanna growled, rounding on the poor delivery boy.

...

Deanna walked down the theater steps to the slow applause of her prey.

"So, I guess you found me."

"Looks that way," she smirked. "Almost like just deserts for what you've done."

"I don't just pick people on a whim, you know," the Trickster said, tracing his fingers over the amphitheater seat back. "My kind get called when people don't have anything else to pray to. Don't you think that college girl and her baby are happier knowing that daddy dearest won't be putting any other girls in their position? The punishment always fits the crime."

Deanna's face morphed into a glower. "And I suppose the frat boy deserved getting abducted by aliens."

The monster shrugged. "I never said I only answered big complaints."

She sneered. "I bet you just get off on is."

"Well," he tilted his head to the side, eyes like liquid gold. "We can't all be perfectly built like you, sweet cheeks."

The sound of a gun cocking. "Don't try anything."

"You know, Sam was right," the Trickster said, "You really shouldn't have come alone."

Deanna smiled as the theater door banged open. "I didn't."

Much, much later, she found a box of chocolates under her pillow. She didn't tell Sam. They were caramel liquor.

...

Ted the reaper was nice, Deanna decided. Too bad she wouldn't remember him when she woke up from her coma.

...

When Sam asked her what she saw in the Djynn's dream, Deanna brushed the comment off.

She did not mention the dark haired man, who looked suspiciously like Dr. Sexy MD, nor the white picket fence house.

She did not mention the auto body shop she owned, nor the taste of her mother's apple pie.

Deanna couldn't even bring herself to voice the three children, who crowded around her waist and called her mother.

After a while he stopped asking.

Only then did the hunter feel herself free to weep onto the Impala's steering wheel.

...

Deanna pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. He was her brother; she practically raised the kid since she could walk.

How could she not give everything she had to save him?

Really, what was a soul compared to her brother?

...

Deanna would have liked the chance to get to know Ben better.

His father, the bendy yoga instructor Elijah, didn't comment past a vague non-committal answer, when Deanna asked about Ben's mother. She knew enough not to push, though she gathered that it hadn't ended well.

The hunter entertained vague fantasies of living in the little picket fence neighborhood with her old flame. Elijah made one sexy single dad, but she caught the sidelong glances he cast at her, and would bet money he wouldn't mind a feminine influence in his son's life.

Then the changelings reared their creepy heads, and Deanna was reminded of the ugly truths of the world, and the paved road to hell creeping closer to her with every day.

So when Elijah asked her to stay, she looked into his dark eyes, held his face between her palms, and kissed him chastely.

"I can't. It's complicated, I'm sorry."

...

Sam glowered through his fingers at the disgusting display of affection taking place across the diner table.

This was the, he paused to compute, the fifty second time they had made it to the Mystery Spot diner without incident. The handsome golden eyed waiter spilt a glass of water over Deanna's shirt, as per schedule, prompting an exchanging of numbers, and increasingly transparent innuendo.

Sam contemplated just letting Deanna run off with the guy for the evening (she usually survived when out of his sight, ironically enough. Perhaps whatever was causing this wanted him to have to watch his sister's demise) but decided against it.

"Sorry for spilling soda on your shirt miss," the waiter was saying.

"Well, I suppose you could always apologize by helping me out of it-"

Sam's thoughts ground to a halt. Wait- soda?

He lunged across the table, grabbing the waiter by the throat.

"Sammy!" Deanna squawked, still daubing at her shirt with napkins.

"Woah buddy! I wasn't gonna actually-"

Sam didn't listen as he hauled the man out of the restaurant and pinned him against the chain link fence. "You! Who are you?"

The waiter's features morphed into a familiar Trickster's.

Sam snarled, but the monster snapped its fingers. The next thing the hunter knew, he was snapping awake back in his motel room.

"Rise and shine, Sammy-kins!" his sister crowed from the bathroom, mouth dripping toothpaste. "We should head out, you know, since you assaulted that hot waiter yesterday, and I doubt they will let us back in the diner."

He sighed, burying his face back in his pillow. It was Wednesday, finally. What could possibly go wrong now?

...

A/N:

I wanted to write a girl!Dean story that wasn't revolving around the sexy times with Cas.

Deanna's first name is Marisa, because John's mother's name was Missy. I see he and Mary splitting how to name their children; Mary picks the boys's first names, John the girls'.

In cannon, Dean was raised to be very stoic by John. Here, he tried that once, and Sam capitalized on his father's inability to deal with women and their problems in order to save his elder sister getting yelled at. John does not know how to handle raising a daughter. This causes him to balk at Deanna expressing femininity and default to treating her as he would a son, until he is uncomfortably reminded of her gender.

Sam is more protective of his older sister than he would be of his older brother in cannon. Also, Deanna is more allowing of 'chick flick moments' than her counterpart.

Also, yes, I totally am hinting Gabriel is flirting/has a crush on her. Why? Because it entertains me to do so.


	2. Chapter 2

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...S4

...

Digging oneself out of a buried coffin was decidedly not awesome.

Digging oneself out of a buried coffin, only to be stranded in the middle of nowhere in the epicenter of a circle of flattened dead trees was, decidedly more not awesome.

Deanna was simply glad her shirt was intact enough for her to walk without flashing anybody. Last she had checked, her cloths were coated in her own blood and viscera, as well as torn to ribbons by Lilith's hell hounds. Perhaps the whatever which caused her to walk the earth once more also fixed her cloths.

Later, after a few exploding windows in the rest stop and being splashed in the face with holy water by no less than two paranoid people, Deanna considered asking the strange trench coated being calmly walking into the warded warehouse why it remembered to fix her shirt, but not unbury her.

Then she thought that was a silly idea, and promptly shot it.

Neither rock salt, bullets, nor magic knife slowed the creature's ponderous stride.

"My name is Castiel, I am an angel of the Lord," it said.

Deanna sneered. "Dude, the only angel I believe in is John Travolta."

The alleged angel tilted his (for it looked male) head, expression baring the faintest furrowing of brows, as if he had only a passing footnote of a reference for which muscle groups were required to create expressions.

"We have work for you."

The hunter internally sighed. Of course this was her life.

...

Deanna was a little bit in love with everyone she considered a friend. That was the reason why she considered her closest friends just as good as family. The huntress, of course, would deny any accusations illustrating this point (and had when Sam tried to talk about _feelings_ ).

The angels considered this level of emotion an understandable characteristic of the noble virtuous Righteous Human. They themselves are beings made of equal parts love and divine wrath, and think that this human is kin to their understanding of the importance of heaven's will.

However, Castiel knows the moment he laid eyes on her that Deanna's capacity for love was nothing like an angel's.

Where in his siblings Castiel would see flickering flames, which beat in time with the stitching of creation, in Deanna he saw a spring overflowing from the core of her soul to refresh the hearts of those it reached.

Surely this was what it meant to be Righteous, this pure outpour of concern and devotion.

The angel could not understand how such a being insisted that it was not worthy of being saved.

...

 _All your hands can do is destroy,_ Allistairs voice hissed through her nightmares. _Nothing but steel and blood for you, sweetie._

...

Deanna really hated Castiel.

Not just for his whole, "I dragged you out of Hell I can throw you back in," speech.

Well, ok, maybe that was a small factor. Very small. Miniscule.

Anyway, she hated the stuck up angel.

She hated how indestructable he was; how he was essentially blackmailing her to do heaven's will; how he looked at her brother in disgust- the list went on.

He wasn't as bad as, say, Uriel, or the other legions of dicks in heaven. The little guy was miles better than them. However, while Deanna could excuse the behavior of other angels under the blanketing brush off of general distaste, something about Castiel could really get her buttons pushed in all the wrong ways.

Perhaps it was because he was the first angelic being she had ever encountered. Perhaps it was because he pulled her out of hell, and some part of the hunter couldn't ignore the being which she owed big time for dragging her ass from the fire (never mind that the angel himself didn't comprehend the need for any kind of gratitude for his task, having been acting on heaven's will, or something).

Whatever the reason, Castiel was forever on Deanna's black list, and nothing short of the apocalypse could get him off.

...

In 1973, Deanna takes a moment to observe the person her father was.

Handsome, soft in ways she never recalled forgetting, and flustered at having mistaken a strange woman in a diner for his fiance.

The hunter patted John on the shoulder, remarking how she just had one of those faces, and not to sweat it. In the same breath she convinced him to forgo the hippy van in favor of the perfection that was the Impala.

At least one good thing came out of the trip.

Well, that and finally getting to meet her namesake. Hwever, even the badass-ness of Grandma Deanna was overshadowed by the fact that she was murdered hours later, along with the rest of the Campbell clan.

...

Deanna had gone through her fair share of escapades as a younger woman, and occasionally still found herself in the mood to go gallavanting over the hill with rainbows and unicorns, and whatever other girly stuff Sam liked.

That being said, she found a strange sort of pride in bagging an angel. Anna, having access to millenea of angelic memories as the angel of romance, clearly knew what she wanted. Deanna was happy to oblige.

She also got a very smug sense of satisfaction when their merry little band confronted Castiel and Uriel. The two stuck up angels clearly knew what had been going down (and on whom).

Uriel looked disgusted. Castiel looked vaguely uncomfortable, like a deer in the headlights kind of way.

Deanna savored Anna's last kiss. When the angels and demons started fighting, and Anna was forced to power up, she pressed the back of her hand to her lips for a moment.

Inevitably they all left. Such was her life.

...

Those old guy magicians were jerks, but the joke was on them in this case.

Deanna sipped her frilly pink cocktail, appreciatively judging the parade of bodies prance across the stage. She cheered along with the rest of the bar patrons when one of the performers made an increasingly impressive accrobatic move.

She flagged down the waiter for another purple nurple, making sure she could see how appreicative she was of the tight pants and leather uniform. The waitress cocked a hip and winked suggestively. Deanna grinned. Gay bars were awesome.

...

The siren, with its black hair and smoldering eyes, was undenyably her type, though it couldn't seem to decide whether it was trying to be her lover or her brother.

The half familial half sexual vibes sent all the hunter's bells ringing, placing the siren on a wary watch list.

Once the case was done, Deanna accosted the first dark haired man who expressed even the slightest interest in a bar. She hated being frustrated like that, and reveled the occasion to work off some excess stress.

...

Ted the reaper was just as she remembered him, once she remembered him. The hunter hoped Pamela would like the doe eyed being too.

She could just imagine the psychic sidling up into her death's face, grinning leacherously with the promise of all kinds of possible debauchery.

Deanna wiped a hand across her lips, breath stuttering.

She really hoped Pamela was having fun, wherever she was.

...

"If you have me do this," Deanna said, face masked in shadows, "You will not like the thing that comes back out."

"For what it's worth, I would give anything to not have you do this," the angel replied.

The hunter tilted her head up, green eyes more like acid than emeralds. "Because you can't, its not worth anything." Her heart rate evened, pumping fiery composure through her corded muscles.

Castiel's shoulders shifted, as if to abort a movement to reach out, or curl around himself in shame.

Deanna opened the door.

Allistair grinned bloodily. "Like I said, sweetie, nothing but steel and knives for you."

She slashed him across the face. "Shut up."

...

Deanna knew two things after her foray into the professional corporate world of business.

One, Zachariah was a massive douche.

Two, heels and pantyhose were awful.

...

Jimmy was not her type. He was nice, for the brief period of time Deanna had met him, but as a general rule, the huntress disliked neatly combed hair. His shoulders were constantly twitching like a rabbit waiting for a wolf, and his hands would ring themselves in a nervous tell.

Also, Deanna did not intrinsically like blue eyes. She much preferred the smoldering dark gaze of Dr. Sexy MD (that was half the reason she had gone for Elijah), and then there was that golden eyed stranger who Sam got pissy over whenever she mentioned him.

However, she liked Cas's eyes, because they were his.

The moment he returned to his vessel, she knew by the immediate stiffening of his back, and the way his head tilted down, watching the feet of his opponents.

Her heart swelled with ashamed joy at the angel's return (Jimmy had been through so much, and his poor daughter...).

Then Castiel had looked at her, empty of whatever quavering emotions he once held.

The swell crashed and shattered, leaving her emotions in ruins.

Deanna swore in the back of her mind. Of course, the moment she realized she liked the guy, he would be taken away from her.

Everyone she loved always left her.

...

And then Cas got exploded the devil rose.

Freaking typical.

Turns out the apocalypse was needed for the angel to become permanently fixed in her good books.

...

A/N:

In 1996 John Travolta stared as the angel Michael in a film by the same name, hence Deanna's reference.


	3. Chapter 3

...

...S5

...

"So what are you planning to do for your last night on earth?"

"I thought I would just sit here quietly."

Deanna tilted her head to the side, a pitying smile playing across her lips. "Well, it would be a waste for you to spend the night alone. How about I join you?"

Wide blue eyes watched her apprehensively as she sidled to the motel bed, slinking to a seat. She patted the comforter. "Come here."

Mechanically, the angel rose to his feet and shuffled to the woman's side.

Deanna chuckled, and placed a palm against Castiel's cheek to turn his face to hers. "So, here's how I want to spend our last night, and if you can manage to stay quiet, I'll be impressed."

The distance between their lips closed to nothing.

They didn't get the deposit back on the room.

...

"Dude, I'm human, I need to sleep," Deanna moaned piteously into her phone, face half pressed into the motel pillow. "You know, in a bed."

There was a pause, then Castiel said, "Was that a 'subtle hint'?"

She chuckled at his half questioning half pleased tone, at having unraveled another strange human custom. She could practically see the air quotes. "No, not tonight, I have a headache."

"If you are unwell, I can fly by and-"

Deanna's chuckle evolved into a weak laugh. "No Cas, what I mean is, I just need sleep."

"Oh, ok. I'll just wait here then."

...

In the awful 2014 future that will not, cannot, and will never be allowed to be, that Deanna and Cas were together. If one could qualify unfeeling physicality and non-monogamy as 'together.'

"How could you let him fall apart like that!" Deanna hissed to her older doppleganger. "Cas is our friend, and you treat him like a sex toy, in between letting him get stoned to death!"

The older woman sneered, rubbing an old scar which dug deep into her stomach. Her hair was shaved close, in a style Deanna had not worn since she was a teenager. "That's how we've always treated him, so don't think yourself any better than me, sister."

When Deanna returns to her own time, she clutches the lapels of her angel's stupid oversized trench coat, and presses her head against his chest.

They spend the night close together on the couch, silent save for the commentary Deanna spun to accompany the turner classic movie marathon scrolling across the motel TV screen.

As the human began to nod off, she leaned heavily against her friend, who remained unnaturally alert, as always.

"Cas," she breathed with a chuckle, "don't ever change."

...

While clearing out a typical haunting in an abandoned house, Deanna ran straight into a nest of black widows.

Luckily, her very own pocket angel, while not up to fixing paraplegics, was still capable of boosting her owns bodies functions to flush out toxins.

Sitting on the motel bed, Deanna fidgeted. Her fever broke, but her healer was still standing close, one hand pressed against her head.

"What's up doc?" she said.

Cas frowned. "You have a hormone imbalance which-"

"Dude!" Deanna cut him off. "Never talk about a girl's hormones."

The angel frowned, but nodded in acceptance as this being another ineffable human thing. "I shall correct the problem without troubling you in the future then."

"Fine fine." She waved him off, and tugged on his tie. "Now it's time for your checkup."

The angel obliged, falling beside her seated form.

"Hey," Deanna sat up, much later, suddenly struck by a thought. "Is Jimmy still in there?"

Castiel shifted on the mattress. "A human soul can only occupy a body through a certain amount of damage. This vessel was ripped apart on an atomic level by an archangel. Jimmy is in heaven."

"Oh, good," she settled back. "Not good that he's, well, but I didn't want to make him... he really loved his wife. I wouldn't do that to them."

...

The next time Sam wanted to talk to super powered monsters and ask for help, Deanna was going to ground him. Literally, burry him up to the neck in dirt so the idiot couldn't run off and do something so monumentally stupid again.

"Freaking heels!" she snarled. "First the skimpy nurse getup when I got shot, now the freaking business suit and heels again! And I though the japanese shrimp girl was bad enough!"

"Dee-"

"No Sam!" The hunter pulled off her sunglasses. "I hate procedural cop shows! They're all the same, and there's like a million of them on TV. Not only do they think women can run in designer heels, but they have everyone wear sunglasses at night! Do you know who does that Sam?"

"All right, I get it," her brother tried to placate her.

"When I get my hands on that Trickster," she growled.

"Let's just focus on getting out of here."

Deanna grumbled, but followed her brother to the scene of the crime.

Then, of course, it turned out to not be a Trickster.

"So, which one are you?"

Gold eyes bore straight past her bones to her soul. "Gabriel, ok. They call me Gabriel."

Deanna scowled. "Mind telling me how an archangel makes everyone think he's a Trickster?"

"My own private witness protection, sweetie."

The hunter's scowl only deepened as the angel's motivations for starting the apocalypse tumbled out, as if the eons old being had been bundling its feelings so far down that it couldn't disentangle one pained thought from another.

"So, you gonna let me out?"

"First you bring back Cas," Deanna snarled.

The trickster snapped, and a bloodied figure in a trench coat appeared.

Immediately Castiel stalked to the hunter's side, checking her over for injury.

"I'm fine," she murmured, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. He calmed slightly, leaning into the touch.

"Oo, Castiel, watch out, she's a feisty one!" Gabriel leered, his eyes sharp with something too heavy for Deanna to place as one emotion.

The angel of Thursday glared, and made to take a step towards the circle of fire, but Deanna laid a hand on his shoulder. Her cool gaze swept to pin the trapped archangel in place. Gold met green. "You know, I really liked you. Then I found out you were a dick. Guess that's just my luck." Her fist clenched and smashed into the fire alarm. "Now don't say I never did anything for you."

...

Deanna cursed whoever introduced the angels to the Terminator franchise, because all this time travel nonsense was just getting ridiculous.

That and the bad guys really liked to monologue.

"You are not an integral piece of apocalypse, Marisa Winchester." Michael said, using the voice of a young John. "It will continue on, whether you cooperate with me or not. Without my true vessel, I will simply be limited in what powers I can access."

"So you're saying without me you'll lose."

"No, without you, more people will die."

Deanna's lips pressed white together. "Hate to break it to you, but I don't do sloppy seconds."

"You are my true vessel. Whether you like it or not, that will never change." A gentle smile touched the archangel's mouth. "But not my only one."

...

The cupid looked between Deanna and Castiel, practically overflowing with bubbly glee.

"Oh my Father, you two are so cute together!"

...

In Deanna's heaven, she saw her brother lit under fireworks at night.

She saw her mother baking pie.

She didn't see a dark haired angel.

That irked her.

...

All Deanna wanted that night was pie, and maybe the number of that frighteningly attractive woman in the cafe. Then the seemingly benign building turned into the motel from hell, and a council (coven? pantheon? multitude? murder? yeah, definitely that last one) of gods wanted to use her family as poker chips in the apocalypse.

Freaking perfect.

Just when the hunters began to become achingly aware of how completely over their heads they were, the dining room door burst open.

"Oh, can't we all just get along?"

"Ga-" Deanna felt soft fingers press against her lips to silence her, even as Sam clutched his throat, choking.

"It's always wrong place worst time with you two, isn't it?" the archangel said.

After being zapped back to their room, and a quick explanation of how exactly screwed they were by Kali's binding spell, Deanna was close to panicking.

Luckily (luckily? again with that word) a prince in shining armor was stepping up to the plate.

"Guess it's time for a little of the old black magic," the Gabriel said, spraying his mouth with mint. "But first~"

The angel pulled Deanna's wrist and swung her down into a movie worthy smooch. They broke apart gasping. Gold met green.

Deanna slapped him across the face, but the god only smirked. "We could have been great together kid," he said, and dropped her on the floor, and vanishing.

The huntress scrambled to her feet livid. "No a word!" she snapped at her brother, who had a fist pressed against his mouth to contain his chuckles.

"I didn't say anything," he chortled.

"Yeah, well you were thinking it," she growled.

Of course, Trickster charming failed in his attempted rescue. Between the gut wrenching terror, Deanna felt a moment of bemused candor at how she always seemed to be the one to rescue the princess, and briefly a half thought as to how the angel would look in a plastic crown.

Then Gabriel got stabbed by his ex. While Deanna could approve of the sentiment, she really did not think now was the best time to be whittling away allies.

Luckily her ability to fast talk could pull over even a multi national pantheon of gods. Well "luck".

Deanna leaned her head against the roof of the Impala, trying to calm her heart and compartmentalize the racing thoughts in her mind.

Knuckles rapped on the glass, from the inside of the car.

The huntress pulled out a gun before her eyes could fully register what they were seeing.

"Gabriel?"

The archangel gestured fervently. Deanna ran a hand over her lips, discreetly scanning the parking lot, before sliding into the Impala's driver seat.

"You're alive." Her voice did not waiver.

Gabriel hunkered down lower in the back of the car. "Yep, and I would like to keep it that way."

"How are you here?" She watched him from the corner of her eye.

The angel shifted his shoulders, as if to stretch extra limbs past the cramped metal walls. "Sword was a fake. Snapped it up from a can of orange squeeze."

Deanna breathed deeply. "So all those gods in there have no chance, and they're about to summon Lucifer."

"What do you care?" Gabriel snorted. "The second you get our blood back from Kali, I'll snap us out of here. Problem solved."

The hunter glared.

"We could just drive away," the archangel said. "You, me, the Sasquatch too I guess, and the open road."

Deanna ran a thumb over the Impala's steering wheel, rough nail gliding over leather. "No," she said.

"Why?" Gabriel leaned over the seat back, arm just brushing her shoulder. "I've been under the radar for millennia, you think two humans would be hard to keep in lock down too? Please," he huffed. "I'm the fifth most powerful being in creation."

"Yeah? And then what? We hide on some beach in tahiti, and people die while we're drinking cocktails." She turned around fully to face the wide golden eyes. "No, I won't let that happen!"

"Then what do you want me to do!" Gabriel cried. "I can't kill my own brother!"

"Can't or won't?" Deanna growled.

The angel shifted back, staring through the being in front of him to some long forgotten idea, like a half remembered parent's reprimand.

Deanna glowered at him in disgust, and pulled herself out of the car, before her self control to not strangle the blonde failed.

Of course, the hotel hell turned into a war zone five minutes after she stepped inside.

Crouching behind a woefully inadequate shelter, Deanna tried to think of how she and her brother would escape this mess in one piece.

Luckily prince charming didn't drop the ball this time.

"Guard this with your life," the archangel said, appearing at her side in a flutter of light, shoving a video tape into the dazed woman's arms.

He hustled her, Sam and Kali out of the motel door, sword drawn to hold back the devil. Gabriel's hand lingered on her arm for half a second, before the trio booked it to the Impala.

The goddess ordered the humans to stop the car let her out at a crossroads.

Kali eyed Deanna haughtily, a hot breeze stirring the twilight lit clouds. The huntress held the other woman's gaze evenly, unwilling to lose the battle of wills.

She smirked, her head tilting coyly. "He always did like strong women."

Deanna pressed her lips together, not trusting herself to speak as the goddess vanished in a whirl of fire.

Later, the siblings sat silently in the car, waiting till sunrise.

Sam glanced at his sister. "So what did Gabriel mean when he-"

"Nothing."

"Well, for whatever reason, the guy liked you."

"Quit it Sam."

"Do you ever think he did what he did because-"

"No," Deanna cut her brother off sharply. "I don't."

...

"So, how are we going to spend our last night on earth?" A tired smile tugged Deanna's lips. "Again."

Castiel enfolded the hunter in his arms, forehead brushing against hers. "I thought we could sit here quietly."

She leaned against he shoulder, hands crossed over her stomach. "Sounds like a plan."

Later, after losing another hotel deposit, the couple caught their breath together in the darkness.

Cas looked at her in wonder, his hand soft against her abdomen. A war took place behind the blue of his eyes; awe sliding to conditioned disgust, then panic, before settling on an overwhelming determination. He opened his mouth as if to speak, paused, then closed it again, before settling back against the bleach scented pillows.

Deanna didn't see any of this, her human vision unable to pierce the darkness. However she did sigh contentedly when her angel's arm snaked around her, pulling her close against a warm chest.

The next morning, the hunter stretched languorously, before heading to the restroom to make herself presentable. She crossed to what passed as a kitchenette and opened the mini-fridge.

Deanna reached for a beer, but the fallen angel crossed to her side and plucked it from her fingers. "Cas, what the hell?"

"You should not imbibe alcohol in your condition."

The hunter choked. "My what?"

His brows furrowed in confusion. "You are with child."

She blinked, askant. "What? No. I'm on the pill."

"The what?"

Deanna waved her hand. "I controls my hormones making it so..." She trailed off in dawning comprehension. The hunter rounded on the angel, finger pointing accusingly. "Dude! You've been messing with my birth control!"

The angel tilted his head. "Your what?"

"It stops me from getting-" She gesticulated furiously at her abdomen. "Like this!"

"I do not understand. Why are you upset?"

"Why?" She ran a hand through her hair. "Why? Well, I'm me, and you're, well, you-"

"Ah, I think I understand." Castiel wrapped his arms around her. "I was too far fallen at the child's conception for it to be a true nephilim," the angel assured.

Deanna held up her hand and pulled away. "No, we're not talking about this now. Devil back in the box first, then-" her breath caught. "No. Just, no."

...

Deanna keened, arms wrapped around the former broken mess of her body. Her soul flickered in longing for her brother, her family, her friends, for the tiny life snuffed out before she had a chance to properly acknowledge its existence.

Castiel looked down at the weeping woman, brows furrowed. The angel did not crave the same things he did when he was sinking close to humanity, however his love for the human beside him would forever remain ingrained into the core of his being.

She wanted so little, how could he deny her that which he had the power to give?

Tenderly, he wrapped the weeping woman into his arms, and kissed away every tear which spilt from her hazel-green eyes.

...

...

A/N:

This didn't work itself into the scene, but 2014! Deanna went back to acting and dressing in a masculine manner, due to her falling back into the thought pattern that no one needed Deanna, but they might need Dean.

Gabriel might have been a little bit in love with Deanna, but Deanna doesn't like to think that's why the archangel decided to save the world. She doesn't consider herself worth that. In truth, she was only a part of the reason Gabriel decided to root for the human team.

Yes, Deanna lost the baby (come on, the stress plus getting the shit beat out of her will do that, especially to one so young). She was not ok for a long while, but after a few months, she and Cas got it on like bunnies, and well... next chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

...

...S6AU

...

The mother of a nephilim could never truly leave the realm of the supernatural. Even discounting the fact that the baby's daddy hovered like an over powered mother hen, in between quick flights to satisfy pie cravings, an angelic hybrid needed several intensive layers of warding to remain hidden from heaven's eye.

Naturally, Deanna went to live at Bobby's.

The old hunter growled and grumbled, but made sure she had cushions to sit on the hard kitchen chairs with, and the master bedroom cleared out for her use.

Deanna tried to protest the room, but Bobby waved her off.

"I ain't got no need for it, girl! Besides, it's the only room that can fit a crib, as I doubt you'll want a nursery."

Images of fire and her mother screaming danced across her mind. Deanna repressed a shiver, and nodded her thanks.

Castiel apparently shared her thoughts, as he somehow managed to miracle up a cold iron fence to encompass the property. For a solid six months the library was covered in scraps of metal, as the angel constructed a meticulously perfect warding array to weld to the iron bars.

During that time, Deanna would lay on the couch (forbidden from doing any kind of heavy lifting by Bobby) and watch her partner twist the inch thick beams with his fingers into complicated origami like charms.

The older hunter insisted on keeping notes, citing how, as his name was on the property's papers, he better well know what kind of voodoo was going on his house.

On this day, however, Bobby had run to town for a much needed food run. Deanna had curiously asked whether the locals knew that he could walk again. That comment earned her a light tap on the head and a resounding call of , "Don't ask stupid questions."

With no monsters to put down and being banned from moving any of the heavy books in the house, the huntress grew bored.

She tilted her head to where Castiel sat hunched over a pile of scrap and silver.

"What should we name it?"

The angel looked up. "What?"

"The baby, what should we name it?"

His eyes shifted to the side, posture looking uncomfortable. "I have never, in the entirety of my existence, had the occasion to bestow a name upon anything."

Deanna laughed.

"My dad once told me that he and my mother made a deal when she was pregnant. Mom could pick the first names for all the boys and dad could pick the first names for the girls." She wrinkled her nose. "That's why my first name's technically Marisa. I'm named after dad's mom who died a few months before I was born. Mom gave me the middle name Deanna after her mother."

Castiel pondered the few suitable human names he knew, which held the same emotional weight implied by Deanna's story. "Using that logic, I would bequeath the name Mary upon any daughter we have and... James for the second name of a son."

...

Mary Joellen Winchester was the spitting image of her mother, right down to her green eyes and freckle pepper nose. The only difference was the patch of dark brown fuzz atop her head.

"I wanted her to have your eyes," Deanna complained lightly to Castiel, who had yet to allow the baby to rest anywhere save his or her mother's arms.

"I believe your eyes to be superior in beauty to my own," the angel said, transfixed by the tiny life staring up at him. "They are very human."

Deanna flushed. "You don't say things like that out loud, Cas." She ghosted a palm across the baby's cheek. Mary grumbled, and rolled over, closer to the crook of her mother's arm. "I think about the way I grew up, and I think I want something different for her."

"As a nephilim, she will never be safe from those who wish her harm." Castiel said from his place opposite her on the bed. The couple had sprung for a memory foam mattress to go beside the crib Bobby had in a dusty storage locker. The old man gruffly brushed off any attempt to ask why he had such a specific piece of furniture.

"Yeah." Her fingers combed through the dark fuzz on the baby's head.

The angel watched, brows furrowed. "I do not wish for her to be brought up as a soldier either," he rumbled. "However, since that is what we both are, I believe her upbringing will be influenced by both of our occupations."

"Yeah," Deanna said again, more quietly.

He looped an arm around her waist. "We will do our best for her, never the less. She will be happy."

The hunter chuckled wetly. "Of course. With two awesome parents like us, who wouldn't?"

...

The angel prowled tirelessly around his partner and child's room, lashing at any shadow which dared to flutter near.

Deanna was beginning to feel stir crazy under the constant scrutiny, but kept her mouth shut.

Warding or no, the supernatural stuff in her life always struck at some point. She wasn't letting her baby out of her sight until she was at least over six months old, and out of danger of demonic or angelic influence.

Six months and twenty-four hours after Mary's birth, Castiel approached his partner with a proposition.

"Mary is beyond the immediate age of supernatural influence. If I were to get Sam, now would be the optimal time."

Deanna's fingers clenched white around the crib's side. Her lips pressed tight together, twisting through conflicting loves and turmoil.

Castiel brushed his shoulder against hers. "I will not force you to choose between your brother and daughter."

"Our daughter," she corrected, resting her weight against him. "How long would you be gone?"

The angel shifted the muscles along his back. "I do not know. A week, perhaps a month."

Deanna exhaled evenly, eyes pressed shut. "Right. I can hold the fort on lockdown. We haven't heard anything from either end of the stairs for this long, maybe our luck will hold."

The couple exchanged a look.

"I will put up extra warding," Castiel promised.

...

One month where Deanna manned the phones as a fake FBI agent and slept with a knife under her pillow and her daughter in her arms.

Bobby took to scouting out the property at night. His efforts helped to ease the new mother's mind, but she would still wake sometimes, startled by the lack of familiar weight on the other side of the bed.

At the end of thirty days (not that she had been counting or anything) two male figures appeared in the junkyard with a flutter of wings and a burst of sulfurous scent.

The two bodies collapsed, even as the huntress ran towards them, silver knife in her belt and gun in her hand.

"Cas?"

"Deanna," the angel rumbled, heaving himself into an exhausted slump.

"Cas! Man, are you ok?"

"I am recovering," he sighed, brushing off her attempts to help him or his burden up. He looked down at the crumpled body still in the dirt. "I'm so sorry."

"Why?" She ran a hand over her eyes, which were suspiciously shiny. "You're back, Sam's back. You did good."

"I'm sorry Deanna," he repeated again. "I failed."

"What are you talking about? Sam's right here!" She pointed at the slumbering figure.

The angel shook his head. "That's just his body. I couldn't retrieve his soul."

Deanna backed up half a step. "What does that mean?"

He fixed her with a feral stare. "I means that I won't allow that thing conscious anywhere near you or Mary."

"Awesome." The huntress ran a hand over her totally not trembling lips. "So what do we do?"

"I don't know. If I attempt to return to the cage, we could risk exasperating the cracks through which I retrieved Sam's body. It could risk releasing Lucifer and Michael."

"Right." Deanna pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. "I guess we can lock Robo-Sam in the panic room until we figure something out."

...

The hunter slammed her head against the enormous book spread open on the table. Mary grumbled unhappily from her place curled in her mother's lap.

"Sorry baby," Deanna crooned. "Mama's brain is just melting out of her ears from too much research."

"That is anatomically unlikely. None of these books are cursed in such a way to get that result," Castiel said, fluttering into existence at her side.

Deanna groaned again. "Cas, there book's have got nothing."

"We can't just fire a big gun at this, otherwise the universe could shatter." The angel stated, placing another stack of books on the table. "Bobby thinks that these will be useful, and hopes that you have not destroyed his residence while he is taking care of the haunting."

Green eyes turned contemplative. "Maybe we're just not using the right big guns." She rose to her feet and scanned the bookshelves, supporting the baby against her shoulder with one practiced arm. "Ah ha, here it is!" She crowed, plucking a tiny spell box from between two dead sea scrolls (curtesy of angel express). She rattled the box.

"Think this big gun could handle it?"

Castiel's brows furrowed. "If he could be convinced."

"Right," the hunter grinned, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. "Looks like I've got a date with Death."

The angel frowned. "I would rather you didn't phrase it like that."

Deanna kissed his cheek with a chuckle as she crossed to the couch. "Don't worry, Death's not on my bucket list. Now, if we're gonna do this, you need to get some Chicago deep dish pizzas, and I need to make some pie."

Two apprehensive weeks later saw the heavenly power couple on a picnic table just outside of Cicero. Bobby was back at the house, salt and shotgun balanced on one knee with Mary on the other.

"Beer, pizza, chips, wings, and pie," Deanna checked the last box on the list. "Awesome."

Castiel placed the paper plates and cups meticulously on the table.

The hunter placed the clipboard on the table. "Now you just need to kill me."

"No."

"Come on Cas, it will be just for a minute."

"I will not allow you to kill yourself, however temporarily, in order to make a social call to Death."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, how else do you suppose we contact him?"

Castiel frowned. "I can, for a brief time, allow you to pierce the veil." He tapped her on the forehead with two fingers.

She patted herself down. "That's it?"

An annoyed voice sounded over her shoulder. "Not you again."

Deanna spun around, grinning widely. "Ted!"

The reaper scowled down at her. "What are you doing here Deanna?"

"We need to speak with Death," Castiel intoned, shoulders squared and posture looming.

"No." Ted shook his head. "He calls us, we don't call him."

"Come on, please?" Deanna wheedled.

The reaper huffed in frustration. "It's not a matter of whether I want to-"

"That's enough," a quiet, contained voice said.

Deanna looked over her shoulder to see a tall gaunt man sitting at the set picnic table, casually serving himself a slice of pizza. The muscles along Castiel's back twitched.

"I hear you were looking for me," Death said.

"To return your ring," Deanna rushed to say, fishing the steel silver circle from her pocket and holding it out. She had wanted o hold the thing ransom, but Cas had quickly shot the idea down. One did not bargain with powerful beings like Death, one begged.

"Hm. That's not all you want. We should continue this conversation in private." Death made a shooing gesture, and an invisible wall sprung up around he table, with the angel locked and reaper outside.

Castiel surged towards the shimmering wall, but Deanna made a shushing motion. He scowled, but nodded and backed off, watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes.

The hunter wiped a hand over her lips and sat down at the table. "My brothers, Sam and Adam, are trapped in the cage downstairs. I want- Could you get them out? Please?"

Death hummed around a bite of cheese. "This is quite good. My compliments to the chief." He wiped his mouth with a napkin. "I don't normally bring people back, but I might make an exception. Pick one. Sam's soul or Adam's."

"Sam." She ran a hand over her lips. "But, would you get Adam out? You don't have to bring him back, just, the kid doesn't deserve what's down there. He was in heaven."

Death tilted his head. "I could. Just know that neither of those souls will be unscathed."

"Can't you just break off the hell bits?"

"The soul cannot be broken into pieces, not even by me," Death said, with an air of long suffering. "I take it you ant Sam resurrected. I can't erase your brother's hell, but I can put up a wall."

"Right, thanks."

"Now about my fee."

Deanna patted her pockets. "I'm a bit strapped for cash, but I make a mean apple pie."

"I propose a bet." Death held out his ring to her. "When you get back to the land of the living, put it on. I want you to be me for one day. Take it off before the end of twenty four hours and you lose."

The hunter held out her hand. The ring felt much heavier than is size would indicate as it plopped into her palm. "All right."

A half smile pulled the gaunt man's features.

Later, after biding the anthropomorphic personification farewell and miracling away the remaining food on the table, Deanna took a steadying breath, and slipped the heavy square ring onto her finger.

Ted, now fully visible to her vision again, crossed his arms. "Now don't mess this up. I've got better things to do than be your babysitter."

"Yeah yeah." Deanna waved him off. She leant forward to give Cas a peck on the cheek. "Well, dear, I'm off to work. Make sure to watch the baby." Her tone was jovial, but the angel nodded seriously.

"Stay safe," he rumbled. Blue eyes flicked to the reaper. A mote of understanding passed between the two males. Ted looked down. Castiel smirked.

Being Death sucked.

Luckily (luckily?) Death seemed content to drop weirdly cryptic comments about conspiracies and fetched her brother's could back, despite her losing the bet.

Deanna sat in the panic room on the edge of the brother's cot, singing rock songs as she combed her fingers through his shaggy hair.

The patient grumbled and groaned, shifting for the first time since Cas had lifted his artificial coma.

"Hey there sleepy," the huntress hummed.

"Dee?" Sam struggled to open his eyes, flopping around like a great dane puppy. "What happened? I had the weirdest dream..."

"That you jumped into hell and took the devil with you?" Deanna said, unimpressed.

Sam looked at her. "Yeah, that." He sighed. "Not a dream then?"

"No."

"So why aren't I still there? Or remembering it at all?"

"Death put up a wall in your brain to block off what happened to you in the cage." She knocked his forehead lightly with her fist. "Don't pick at it, and you should be fine."

Sam rubbed his forehead, half disgruntled, all fondness. "How long was I gone?"

"About a year." Deanna shrugged. "Speaking of which," she got up from the cot, huge smile breaking across her face. "Time for you to meet your niece."

...

Creatures which reproduce are naturally inclined to develop certain instincts in order to ensure the survival of their progeny.

In humans, this often manifested as an affection for small creatures with disproportionately large eyes, as well as the uncanny tick to focus on knee high humans when they toddled into a space.

Angels, being immortal non-reproductive beings, did not have the same instincts as humans.

Castiel fumbled through the first few months of his daughter's life. Logically, he understood the need to protect his partner and child, and performed that duty with the same focus he gave to his former angelic military career.

However, he did not have the instantaneous reaction to little Mary's cry that Deanna seemed to have been born with, nor did the baby's distress conjure the same frantic need to respond as it did in the child's human family members.

Even Sam, who claimed to know nothing about children, would rush towards his niece when she tested out her lungs.

Despite his lack of inborn child-reactionary instinct, the angel tried. At first he tried for the sake of his partner, then, as time progressed, he learned to love Mary for her own faults and merits.

Initially he had been captivated by his daughter's existence, but it was more for the echoes of her mother than for any intrinsic thing about the child. He loved her because of what she represented, and because Deanna loved her.

Sometimes Castiel would wonder whether he would be experiencing this problem, were he still fallen and human. Then a voice, which sounded suspiciously like Deanna's, would say that 'what if's' were silly, and he should focus on the now.

So Castiel would sit beside his daughter's crib to soothe her startled cries at night, and gather her tiny form beneath his wings to brush away her tears. Slowly, he fell in love for the second time.

...

A/N: nothing for this chapter I think.

Season 6 plot related stuff starts next chapter. This was the year between S5 and S6.

Mary was born in April.


	5. Chapter 5

... S6.5AU

...

"You were a soldier, right?" Deanna asked, savoring a lazy morning where no monsters needed slaying and all was right with the world.

"That is correct," Castiel replied.

"What did you fight? Just demons?"

The angel stretched languorously in a human gesture he was hoping to make into a habit. "Extra-dimensional creatures, mostly."

"What, like giant squid monsters?"

"The little humans could perceive of it would seem to be similar to a cephalopod, yes. Mr. Lovecraft was among those capable of perceiving an angel's true form, which I think was the only thing which saved him from madness when he walked into our battle."

"Huh. Awesome." Deanna propped her chin up on his chest, eyes searching. "You were a soldier for a long time, weren't you."

The angel tilted his head. "Since the dawn of creation."

Her grip around his torso tightened, as if to reassure herself that he was still present beside her, and not flown off to greater things. "Do you ever miss it?"

"I have no wish to be anywhere but here." He kissed her head. "Though, if I ever need an easy assignment to relax, I might reconsider -"

She punched his shoulder, smothering a smile against his collarbone. "Tell me about it."

Castiel settled back into the pillows. "I was the human equivalent of a field commander, before being elevated to tactician. My superiors would often put me in charge of seemingly impossible odds. I think now they may have been trying to get rid of me."

Her fingers traced a circular rune, scared into the angel's chest by a box cutter. "Is everything out there trying to flatten the earth?"

There was a long pause as her partner thought. "A being called the Doctor sometimes broke through the ranks, but it had a positive view of humanity, so we generally didn't disturb it when it toured around London. Then there is a subset of humans with the ability to inherently manipulate the cosmic energies of their universe. Sometimes one will appear here through what they call the Veil. They usually did not have malicious intents towards the whole of the earth, but we still removed them from this plane as aberrations."

His breathing was slow and a conscious effort to not forget to do. "Other realms sometimes encroached upon this one. The Dreaming once spilled over at its edges, but we didn't do more than inform the Endless when that happened."

A drowsy hum prompted him to continue.

"The subjects of Titania sometimes cause mischief, and we must inform her before taking action." The corners of his mouth tweaked down. "I have never been to any of the fairy realms myself, but I am informed that the Nac Mac Feegle are rather rambunctious." He looked at Deanna. "I think you would like them."

"That must have been hard, having to fight all the time."

"You were a soldier too, Deanna."

"Yes, but I had pie. You just had heaven."

"My siblings and I were sometimes placed on assignment on earth," he said defensively.

"Oh?"

"Yes. I was stationed in Europe to observe humanity with my sibling Damiel several decades ago. He fell for a female performer. A trapeze artist, I believe." The angel shifted his shoulders ponderously. "Damiel became fully human, so I am unsure as to whether he is still alive in the present."

"Was he your friend?"

Castiel froze, becoming like marble under his partner's embrace. "I do not remember," he said slowly. "I was taken in for re-education shortly after that assignment."

Arms tightened sharply around his ribs.

...

Domestic life with an angel presented several interesting, while not exactly challenges, definitely happenings from out of the norm.

For example, Castiel somehow got it into his blue eyed head the strange human social norm for males to be the provider of a family. Deanna blamed him watching too many daytime sitcoms.

In any case, when Bobby began grumbling about the huntress needing to stop the credit card fraud now that she had settled down where the IRS could find her, the angel had vanished. Less than a blink later, he reappeared with his pockets full of spanish gold doubloons, only mildly encrusted with sea salt.

That prompted another half hearted round of grumbles, this time revolving around having to call up contacts in the black market to liquidate the treasure.

The next time the angel went out for a money run, he returned with over ten thousand dollars in change. When asked, he mentioned something about scouring every sidewalk and storm drain between Denver and for coins.

Deanna couldn't stop laughing at the bemused expression on Bobby's face when he heard this.

Castiel also seemed to think that Deanna was incapable of performing basic household chores, most likely due to her being banned from strenuous activity during her pregnancy.

The hunter didn't mind, though the first time Cas tried to make a pie and failed, she threatened to ward the kitchen if he set foot in it again. While holding a funeral for the poor pastry in the back yard, Deanna would suppose that asking a being with no concept of taste to cook was not a good idea no matter how you looked at it, and she shouldn't hold her partner's insufficiencies against him.

Then there was the hovering, which left the humans wondering if Castiel was part vulture.

Deanna could excuse his constant presence during the pregnancy and first few months of motherhood, but she seriously needed more space to herself. She finally broached the topic when the holy oil in the Impala's trunk began to look to appealing.

"Maybe you should take a quick trip upstairs?" Deanna sighed, moving the shotgun she was cleaning so her partner could use the table to begin sorting laundry.

The angel's brow furrowed as he intently matched two tiny pink socks together. "For what reason?"

"You seem home sick."

Castiel put down the socks to stare intently at his partner. "My home is here with you."

She flushed, but refrained from her usual litany of 'you don't say things like that aloud', refusing to allow the subject to be changed. "Well, yes, but you're allowed to miss the places you've been before. I mean, I sometimes miss hitting the road in the Impala."

"Would you prefer us to live a nomadic lifestyle?"

"No, no." The hunter waved her hand. "What I mean is, you can visit. Like how I'll sometimes take Mary for a day drive."

The angel matched another pair of socks, white this time, with little lacy edges. He took special care to line the toes up, before folding them together. "Perhaps I shall take a 'day trip' of my own, to see the current state of heaven."

"Great!" Deanna tried to not sound too over eager. "I can hold the fort down for a while, and besides, I've got Sam and Bobby here to help me. You take as much time as you need!"

...

The metaphorical gate of heaven had changed since last Castiel had perceived it.

For instance, the infinitely long line of new arrivals wrapping from nimbus to stratus now included angels as well as newly deceased souls.

Bemused, the seraph joined the cue, which sped by so fast and efficiently most of the souls didn't comprehend the wait before waking in their personalized heaven.

"Name," the being at the gate, Peter, said in a bored tone.

"Castiel, I'm an angel." He wanted to add 'of the Lord', but wasn't sure if that was entirely true anymore.

"Castiel?" Peter's eyes widened with interest. "The Castiel?"

The angel looked from side to side. "Is there another Castiel that I am unaware of?"

The saint laughed and pulled a sticky note from his book. "The principalities need to have a word with you. Here." He handed over the note. It was pink with coordinates written in a blue pen.

Castiel looked from Peter to the paper then back again, wondering what the principalities could possibly want with him against how quickly he could flee if needed.

"Did you really trip Lucifer back into his cage?"

"I, uh, had help."

Peter smiled like a a child in a candy store. "That's so cool!"

The angel of Thursday frowned, brows furrowed in confusion, before flying to the location outlined on the note. Principalities, as a rule, were a force to be reckoned with when united. However, gathering the patron angels of countries and continents together under one banner was best expressed by the human phrase 'herding cats'.

He could see what they wanted and leave if things got out of hand.

Castiel stretched his wings joyously. Despite his affections forever being tied to earth, he had missed heaven's atmosphere of permeating grace. It was like returning to the ocean after years in the sahara.

"Castiel?" A quiet voice asked, interrupting his basking.

"Yes?" the angel said, quickly tucking away his wings.

The voice belonged to a wide eyed angel wearing dark skin and a thick winter jacket. "The principality of America will speak with you now. Right this way please."

The angel led him towards a small desk, made even smaller with stacks of paperwork, set in the middle of a wooded glade. A woman with copper curls sat behind the polished wood, typing madly at a laptop.

"Miss America? Your four o'clock is here."

"Thank you Bernard, you can go."

The assistant nodded once, and fluttered away.

Castiel tucked his hands into his coat pockets. The trees above whispered with a gentle breeze. Type keys clicked incessantly.

"So," he said at last. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes." The woman closed her laptop and fixed him with a scanning brown stare. "You are Castiel, former leader of the garrison formerly under the command of Anael?"

The dark haired angel nodded slowly.

"Excellent!" She grinned broadly. "We've been trying to contact you for ages. I'm glad we found you before Raphael could."

"Raphael?" Castiel repeated. A mote of light shuddered in the angel's core. Did the archangel know about Mary? Was it planning to smite his family for his daring to father a nephilim?

"Raphael has been preoccupied with releasing the other archangels from the cage. In order to do that, he has focused his efforts on discovering the location of you, Castiel, along with your companions."

The angel's wings flared. "Why?"

"He believes you to have information on how to open the cage, seeing as how you headed the operation of opening it long enough to throw Lucifer back down."

Images of the four horsemen's rings flashed through his mind, as well as the spell box three were buried in. Castiel made a note to hide the three he had more thoroughly; he trusted Death to keep his own safe.

"And you are against Raphael?"

The principality of America smiled enigmatically. "We follow the words of the prophet Prior Walter."

Castiel mentally calculated time in a manner a human would comprehend. "He was the last prophet called; the one meant to preach the way of peace."

"Yes, but the prophet rejected the book. He did not accept death, and preferred the pain of living. He convinced my brethren and I of our follies. Humanity cannot stay still, nor revert to what they once were."

"You opposed the apocalypse."

She inclined her head. "The prophet also recommended that instead of searching for our Father, we sue God for the pains suffered by his absence." She fluffed her bald eagle wings importantly. "Thus we have secluded ourselves to work on our case."

"So what do you want from me?"

Miss America closed the laptop and folded her hands on its plastic cover. "Firstly, we ask that you act as a witness to several cases pertaining to the apocalypse and previous rulings by the former theocracy. You are also going to be put on trial for the crimes you committed during the apocalypse. Several angels in your garrison were murdered, not counting your former superiors, such as Uriel and Zachariah."

The angel's dark wings flared agitatedly. "Every time I acted against my siblings was in self defense or to avert Lucifer and Michael's fight, which would destroy the earth."

"Yes, but for this new system of judgement by a jury to be effective, then everyone, even the innocent, bust be tried for their crimes." The corners of her mouth lifted sympathetically. "You will not be imprisoned before the trial takes place, and your helping with the other trials will likely work towards lessening whatever sentence the judge does decide."

Castiel shifted his weight to his other foot. He could feel the collective powers of the principalities pressing heavily against him in casual warning. Blue met hazel. "It appears that my best choice is to comply."

"Wonderful!" Miss America snapped her laptop back open. "Now our largest case is against Raphael, and his claim to the ruling mantle of heaven. Our sibling claims to be in charge due to being an arch angel, and therefore highest in heaven's hierarchy. However, Raphael is the youngest of the archangels. For Raphael's claim to be valid, Raphael must first prove that no other archangels are capable of fulfilling the mantle of rule. No one has seen Gabriel in an age, so Raphael's claim is in question. We also wish to question his reasoning for restarting the apocalypse..."

The angel of Thursday patiently listened as the principality outlined the long list of cases and paper conflicts, which had replaced the bloody civil wars in heaven.

...

Back on earth, Deanna putted around the kitchen, phone pressed between her ear and shoulder as she cooked. "So you think it's a djynn?"

Sam's tinny voice chittered on the line's end.

"Yeah, lamb's blood. But I've never heard of that many working together so openly. Are you sure you don't want me to pop down there?"

More chatter, this time with a long suffering air.

"Well, that's what I have Bobby for...Don't let him hear you call him old...You sure?"

Sam's voice gained a tone of reprimand. Deanna roughly began chopping carrots.

"I know man, I'm just going stir crazy here. I need something to do...You were harder to look after than Mary, and that was on the road."

More words.

The knife slammed down, wobbling, stuck in the cutting board. "Yeah Sam, and because I care, that's why I put her first. Don't ever let me hear you say something like that again!" She slammed down the phone. "Bitch."

...

"When the next case gets going, we would really appreciate it if you could act as a witness for the prosecution," the angel said, hands folded politely over her lawyer's suit.

"That shouldn't be a problem," Castiel said, watching the courtroom proceedings.

The other angel followed his gaze and smiled. "We've been reviewing the old prison sentences in light of the corruption scandal in the upper ranks. Many of our siblings are being found innocent of disobeying the spirit of our Father's will."

The presiding angel of judgement banged her gavel against the podium. "Quiet in my courtroom."

The lawyer at Castiel's side pressed a finger to his lips conspiratorially, and the two turned to watch.

The judge shuffled a stack of metaphorical papers. "Gadreel."

The waveform of celestial intent blinked rapidly as the lights of heaven, so long denied from the angel in its cell, flooded the surroundings. It looked up at the council of beings presiding over it. The angel's wings shuddered, feathers broken and twisted from having been cramped together so long.

The judge, wearing a middle aged female vessel with copper colored hair, looked down on him. "Upon reviewing your case, this court has decided that your previous sentence under the former ruling of heaven does not fit the crime to which you were accused."

Hope stirred in the angel's being.

"Upon further deliberation this court, and a council of your peers, have decided to release you from your imprisonment on probation. You will be free to wander the planes of heaven and earth, accompanied by the angel Abner, who will report regularly to your probation officer."

...

"You found who?" Deanna disentangled herself from the engine of a mustang she was restoring to completely focus her attention on the phone pressed between her ear and shoulder. "You sure it's not a shifter or a revenant?"

Sam's low voice spoke excitedly over the line.

"Yeah, I know, but I say him die."

More quick talking. Deanna slammed the hood down. "Cas isn't back yet, but I'll ask him if he knows anything when he gets here."

A short farewell emanated from the receiver.

"You too, and be careful...I don't care if he wants you as a partner to go hunting, this smells fishy no matter how you look at it...Right. Bye."

She hung up and sighed, resting her forehead against the car's cool metal. From a blanket in the shade of the junkyard, Mary gurgled around her teething ring. Deanna looked at her and laughed. "Zombie Grandpa Samuel and Zombie Sammy. Sounds like a bad sitcom."

...

"The goal of this trial is to elucidate the conspiracy headed by the now deceased angel Uriel." The copper curled judge said to the jury. "Our first witness for the prosecution is Castiel. If you would approach the bench, please?"

A burly angel with phoebe wings held out a tablet, inscribed with the word of God. Castiel placed his wings over it. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Father?"

"I do," the angel rumbled.

...

"Sam?" Deanna put down the laundry basket down on the threadbare couch. "I though you were off on a hunt with Samuel."

"I was." Her brother's shifty tone immediately put Deanna on the alert.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

The younger Winchester laughed. "Other than the Campbell family being sketchy as heck-" A high pitched wail cut him off.

"...I thought I always told you to use protection to avoid stuff like this!"

"It's not mine!"

"Oh really?"

"The baby's a shifter," Sam said. "I've been calling him John."

"Monster's have babies?"

"Looks like."

She pulled out a towel and began folding. "So, what, do you need baby care tips?"

"No, I," the hunter sounded uncomfortable. "I can't take him back to Samuel. Something's going on there, and I don't want to know what a bunch of hunters are going to do with a monster baby."

"Ok?"

"I'm outside. I can't get John past the warding."

"What?" She dropped the towel. "I'll be right out."

Deanna hung up the phone, already heading out the door. "Bobby!" she shouted into the library. "Mary's taking her nap upstairs, can you watch her till I get back? Sam's doing something stupid again."

"Right," the old hunter croaked.

The door slammed behind her back as she stalked towards the gates. Just outside the iron bars stood her brother, inexpertly clutching a blanket.

Deanna rolled her eyes and snatched the bundle from his arms. "Seriously, it's like you've never seen a baby before."

"It's not like you and Cas ever let me hold Mary-"

Deanna nodded absently, bouncing the little boy in the crook of her arm. The shifter looked just like Sam, down to the last freckle.

"I'll ask Bobby if he has a safe house. He's been vanishing an awful lot lately, ever since Mary learned how to crawl and I threw out all his rotgut."

Much later, after the baby's shifter father tracked them down to retrieve his child, Deanna stared at her empty hands contemplatively. She shrugged off Sam's attempts to ask if she was all right, snarled at Samuel and the other Campbells if they so much as opened their mouths, and locked herself in the bedroom with Mary for the rest of the night.

...

"The case of Bartleby and the angel colloquially known s 'Loki' will not commence."

Two figures, a blonde and a brunette sat behind the defense bench. The blonde, Loki, kept glancing at his partner for cues as to what was going on. The brunette, Bartleby, hushed his friend, calculative eyes never leaving the presiding angels.

"You are accused of abandoning your post as a Watcher as well as leading the soldier Loki to abandon his duty to smite the first born children of Egypt." The judge looked down at the dark haired angel. "How do you plea?"

"Not guilty," Bartleby stated. "Mercy is not a crime."

A murmur broke out in the jury and audience.

The judge banged her gavel. "Order in my courtroom." She perused the papers on the podium. "First witness for the defense, being presented as an expert witness on humanity and free will, is Castiel. Would you step up to the bench please?"

The lawyer stood up. "I'm sorry, your honor, Castiel had pressing business to attend to back on earth."

"Fine, than we shall move onto the next witness, and reconvene to hear his testimony."

...

The next time Deanna sees Castiel, she punches him in the jaw, and sulks all through his healing of her fingers.

Half way through his explication of civil wars in heaven and drastic measures in need of being taken, she silences him with a kiss.

They don't do much talking for the rest of the night.

...

...

A/N:

Crossover with Angels in America, a very fun and thought provoking HBO series. It's about AIDS and Mormons in New York. So, Raphael is now stuck in court, along with the rest of heaven.

Mentions of , Harry Potter, Sandman, and Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld. Also, Bartleby and Loki from Dogma. Also mentions of Damiel from Wings of Desire. I know in the movie the angel Cassiel is Damiel's partner, but I thought it would be cute if it were Castiel instead.

One year betw S5 and S6, means Mary's ~4mo old when S6 starts. Plus 2 months before they get Sam in hell. Then, according to supernatural wiki, there's ~1mo before we meet Balthazar. So Mary's like...9months old here. Her birthday is in the early spring, April.

So, Deanna is going stir crazy. She is a woman of action, so while she might be fine researching and answering phones and making equipment for other hunters, she really longs to be out in the field. But she wants to stay with her daughter even more, so she ignores her boredom.

...


	6. Chapter 6

...

...S6.75 AU

...

...

Sam and Bobby were off investigating what at first glance appeared to be witches, but after a plague of grasshoppers and rivers of blood, seemed of a slightly more biblical origin.

Back in the salvage yard, Deanna tried not to go comatose from boredom while legions of hunters called for tips and coverups on hunts. Even Mary's sudden discovery of the use of her legs didn't stimulate her mother for long (though Deanna couldn't stop smiling whenever her daughter took a few hesitant crawls, before slumping back down onto her belly again).

Currently she was reviewing the case with her brother, trying to provide emotional support when she was itching for action.

"So the kid said he sold his soul?" Deanna said, phone pressed against her ear while she was elbow deep in engine parts.

Nearby, Mary wriggled closer and closer to the edge of her blanket.

Metal clanged against a wrench. "Did you find out to what?"

The baby scrunched her arms forwards, pulling her legs behind her, inching along like a caterpillar in a onsie.

"I can try to find the book, but who knows with Bobby's library."

The silver sigils on the cast iron gate glinted invitingly a few feet away. Determinately, the little girl scooted towards the edge of the wards.

"Yes you can tell him I said that."

Tiny fingers reached for an origami of metal. It spun just out of reach. Mary frowned, mouth twisting with impending frustration. The nephilim rocked back on her heels, opened her mouth, and screamed. Immediately the fence shuddered as the baby's grace flared.

"Mary!" Deanna swooped down to pick up her daughter. "Baby girl, what's wrong?"

The phone lay forgotten in the dirt.

"Dee?" Sam's voice called from the phone. "What happened?"

The huntress picked the phone back up, bouncing the baby on her hip. "I have no idea. Mary just freaked out. I have to go, I'll call you soon."

Later that night, Deanna lay slumped on the mattress, dead to the world after an exhausting day of trying to discover the whims of a super powered child on the verge of tears.

A figure winged its way into the room. It eyed the slumbering woman critically.

Mary gurgled quietly in her crib.

It's attention shifted to the child.

"I thought I sensed the grace of an old friend," Balthazar crouched down so his eyes were level with the little girl's. "But you're not them, are you."

Mary stared up at the strange man uncomprehendingly. Her eyes tracked his wings, and she reached up to tug at the feathers.

"Castiel, what have you done," the British angel breathed.

...

The next morning, Deanna woke with a start. Every considerable instinct she had developed over the course of her life was instantly on alert.

"Mary?" she called, shooting to her feet. The crib was empty.

"Cas!" Deanna screamed, hands clamped together in prayer. "Mary's gone! Get down here!"

Instantly the trench coated angel was at her side. He scanned the room, before settling on his partner. "Tell me what happened."

The hunter breathed fast, clutching her daughter's blue baby blanket to her chest, eyes squeezed shut.

"Deanna!" The angel clutched her shoulders. "We'll find her, don't worry."

She nodded sharply, taking one last watery breath, before her professional face dropped into place. "Yeah, of course we will."

Cas let her go, and she put down the blanket.

"Yesterday she was throwing a fit by the gate, and made all the wards shake."

"That could have disrupted the sigils and let some of her grace through, but nothing should be able to get through my wards without me noticing."

"It was definitely something supernatural, though. No signs of break in."

The angel frowned contemplatively. "I'll gather the ingredients for a locator spell. It should still work, despite Mary's partial angelic nature."

...

Elsewhere in a mansion housing an escaped heavenly convict and a disco ball, Balthazar balanced his niece on his hip with one hand while perusing the contents of a shelf.

"I'm feeling thoroughly American at the moment. How about you?" He looked down into scowling green eyes.

The baby's posture screamed, 'Not supposed to talk to strangers.'

Balthazar raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'm not a stranger, love, I'm family." He squeezed her in a one armed hug and turned back to the liquor cabinet. "Now, Booker, Bakers, or Candlestick Makers?"

...

"You used Solomon's Eye to break through my warding?" Thunder flashed in the distance to accompany Castiel's glower.

"Just to see whether it was some of Raphael's goons after me," Balthazar placated. "Then, of course, I found your beautiful little nephilim and mistress. Well done, by the way."

"We thought you were dead. We held a post-humus trial to rescind your demotion! And here I find you kidnaping My Daughter and succumbing to hedonism on earth!"

"Ah, yes, thank you for that."

Castiel glared.

Balthazar held up his hands. "I saw the signs and jumped ship. Uriel was killing the other soldiers in the garrison for refusing to join him, so I flew off in hell before he could come after me. When I saw Raphael gearing up for apocalypse part two, I grabbed as much as I could carry and went into hiding."

The angel of Thursday's wings lowered minutely. He sighed. "I will take you up to heaven and you will be tried for your crimes of theft and abandoning your post."

...

"But I had a very good reason," the Balthazar said.

The judge raised her eyebrow.

"Yes," the angel nodded reverently. "I disagreed with the old way things were run and could see heaven going south, so in order to weaken the establishment which opposed our Father's will, I appropriated the weapons."

"So you claim to have betrayed your garrison out of love for humanity."

He shook his head, disgusted. "Humanity, no." The blond's expression shifted to a serious stare. "But I do quite like the earth and don't want to see it flambéed."

"He's a hedonist!" the prosecution sneered.

"So?" Balthazar rolled his eyes. "I have millennia of good service to speak to my character for when it counts. My personal habits don't have anything to do with my loyalties."

...

"I'm being called in as a character witness for Balthazar's case, as well as several other members of the host whose jail sentences are being reviewed. Then, of course, I must stand trial against Raphael, as well as my own trial." Castiel looked positively green.

Deanna pressed her lips to his cheek. "That's later. For now, your daughter needs to be reminded what her daddy looks like."

The angel's grim facade softened. "I keep forgetting that she won't be the same forever. That my family is mortal."

She kissed him again to shush him. "No existential crisis without pie."

...

"Sammy, what are you saying? You got turned into a vampire, and then got better?" Deanna ran a hand through her hair. "What?"

Her brother's voice drawled through the phone, nonchalantly.

"Priorities, right," the huntress laughed humorlessly. "Ok, so grandpa is making an alpha monster zoo." She ran a hand over her lips. "Do we know why?"

"There's some kind of deal going on with Crowley," Sam's voice sounded through the receiver.

"Freaking Crowley," Deanna growled into the receiver. "Right, so we know what he wants with the alphas?"

...

"I cannot remain here at all times to protect you and Mary," Castiel said, gaze ernest. "The trials in heaven are a major step in reestablishing order and providing justice for my siblings in a way we have not seen since God left."

"I don't see why they need you to be there though." The hunter frowned.

"I was a military commander, as well as an integral piece to ending the apocalypse. My testimonies could set hundreds of my siblings who were falsely accused free."

"And that's more important than spending time with your family?"

"I'm doing this for my family," the angel growled. He griped her shoulders. "Don't you want Mary to be able to leave this house without fearing for her life? If I can defeat Raphael in court, it would open a completely new age for heaven. I could pass laws to protect her, and you. Don't you see?"

The hunter pulled herself from his hands and turned her back to him, arms wrapped tightly across her chest.

He sighed. "Deanna, please."

Green flicked up to meet blue. She uncrossed her arms and threw them to the air. "Fine."

...

"I trust Balthazar, and he was cleared of his charges and put on humanity service."

"That doesn't mean I do."

"He is a good soldier. He can watch the house when I'm not there."

"We're doing fine."

"Deanna, please." The angel stared earnestly into her eyes. "Until the trials are done, I still have many enemies. I need to know that you are safe."

The hunter threw her hands up. "Fine."

...

"Deanna Winchester?" the angel questioned.

The hunter nodded slowly. "Who wants to know?"

"You are being asked to stand as a witness for the case of the seraph Castiel, in order to establish the viability of his conduct during the events which took place several years ago concerning the archangels Lucifer and Michael. do you comply?"

Her gun lowered. "Cas is in trouble?"

"Not exactly. He is being tried to prove that his actions were just, concerning the former governing body's corruption."

...

"Do you mean to tell me that you have born the child of an angel?" the judge thundered, leaning to peer at Deanna over her podium.

Whispers broke out like hives in the jury.

"Order in my courtroom!" The judge banged her gavel. She turned back to the hunter. "You are aware that the creation of a nephilim is among the highest law an angel can break?"

"Yeah," the huntress sat back, green eyes sharp. "But did God actually say that, or was it the archangels being dicks again?"

Another whoosh of murmurs and rustling wings.

"That is up for deliberation," the judge conceded. "But that does not discount the danger a nephilim poses on earth."

"Really? Because I've been doing some reading, and it seems like the last batch of half-angel kids were put into a difficult situation and reacted badly to it. Their mothers did not appear to be consulted about their children's conception, and the angelic fathers in question were immediately recalled to heaven for punishment before the kids were born. So that leaves a single mother with a super powered child with no idea what to do or how to raise it."

Deanna leaned forward on the stand. "Now I know some humans in situations not half so bad who have gone dark side. I've put guys like that down, so I'm not criticizing how you angels handled it back then. However, My kid is not a threat. She's happy, healthy, and being taught all the rights and wrongs and responsibilities the last nephilim's parents didn't teach their kids."

Her eyes focused to a cutting emerald. "The worst thing you could do is take away my little girl's parents. Because Cas and I've got a good thing going; I handle all the human stuff he doesn't get, and he gets the angel stuff. Take him away, and Mary grows up without a daddy and her angelic half. Snatch her up to heaven, and she gets raised in a heavenly foster care system where, no offense, you angels won't understand her human needs."

The hunter sat back, panther like in her posture. "The best thing to do is leave my family alone. We're not hurting anyone by existing."

Silence echoed across heaven.

The judge cleared her throat. "We shall address the topic of the angel Castiel's transgression at a later date. However, let it be known by this courtroom, that this judge does not support the forced absence of a father to children who need him."

...

After the conclusion of Castiel's trial, Balthazar refused to leave the house.

"It's not like you couldn't use the help," he drawled, holding a squealing Mary above his head as he lazed on the couch.

Deanna had to admit that things were easier with a live in babysitter. However, she really wished it did not have to be this particular angel.

She could handle the liquor, so long as he shared, the snide comments, even the flirtations. But she would not stand for any kind of funny business around her daughter.

"Oh come on," the angel drawled in his British accent. "It's never too early to learn a bit of profanity."

Deanna glared, knuckles white on the railing of her daughter's crib. "What were you teaching her to say?"

The blonde angel shrugged. "Oh, you know the usual curses and comebacks about goats and breeding. I don't get why you're so upset, it's not like any humans will understand her."

That evening found the huntress cleaning guns by the door when her angel walked in after a day litigating in heaven.

"I don't care where Balthazar stays." Deanna pumped the shotgun, green eyes boring into her partner's. "But it's not gonna be here."

Castiel gulped.

...

Then of course, there were still supernatural problems to keep an eye on.

Like demons. Specifically one demon.

Deanna raised an eyebrow. "You seriously tried to send your goons to kidnap me in my own home."

Crowley smiled thinly. "Well, a little birdie told me you flew the coop on this hunting nonsense, and I thought I would get lucky."

"Looks like I finally found someone whose luck is even worse than mine."

The demon shrugged blandly. "Might I ask how you found me?"

Her smile was all teeth. "Let's just say that my little birdie has a whole flock of favors to call in."

His hand drifted to his pocket, but Sam brandished his shotgun. "Don't try it!"

Crowley sighed. "Well, since I can't allow you to call the god squad down on my head until I finish this... Let's see how moose does with his marbles rattled loose, shall we?" The demon snapped his fingers.

Sam screamed, doubling over in pain as he clutched his head.

Deanna swore, looking away from her prey for an instant. When she looked back, he was gone. Quickly the hunter grabbed a can of spray paint and began ruining the sigils on the walls with extra added lines and squiggles.

"Come on Cas!" she prayed as she worked. "One of these has to break the angel warding enough for you to get you feather butt over here!"

A flutter of wings wounded behind her, spreading relief through her heart. She spun around to see Castiel leaning over her fallen brother, a frown marring his face.

"The wall Death put up in Sam's mind is broken."

Deanna wiped a hand across her eyes as she knelt beside the two men. "Yeah. Can you fix it?"

"I can't rebuild the wall; there's nothing left. But maybe I can shift it." He made to touch Sam's forehead.

Deanna grabbed his arm. "Yeah, no. What does that mean?"

The angel met her eyes squarely. "I can fill the gaps of his soul with my grace, taking the damage and whatever remains of Lucifer's grace into myself."

"Yeah? And what will happen to you?"

He looked away.

"That's what I thought." her fingers tightened. "Right, that's not gonna happen, because there's a little girl who needs her father. We'll find another option."

...

As it turns out, a garrison of angels are much more effective than a single seraph at healing, even if said seraph had equivocal strength with an archangel.

At Deanna's prompting, Castiel discreetly conscripted a few of heaven's finest who were in his debt from the lengthy train of trials (which still hadn't finished). Each angel was sworn to silence, and each filled a minute crack in the bleeding soul of Sam Winchester, sustaining a small, but not debilitating, amount of damage.

The huntress finally breathed a sigh of relief when the last angel stepped back, and her brother opened his eyes.

"Welcome back," she said, smoothing his hair back from his face.

"Hey," Sam whispered horsely. "What happened?"

Deanna shrugged. "Saved the world again. But that's not important. Your hair is getting ridiculous, I'm taking you for a haircut."

Pained laughter filled the room, as the siblings clung to one another in relief.

...

...

A/N:

Mary is just over one year old, as the last episode of S6 takes place in June. Her birthday is in April.

Crowley tried to open Purgatory, but his plans were foiled, used to wrap up leftovers, and left in the fridge to rot.


	7. Chapter 7

...

...S7

...

On the anniversary of Deanna being raised from perdition, Castiel took her out to dinner. Obviously he had been watching too many soap operas, as the night was magnanimously perfect.

First, he flew her to Paris, and they spent the evening eating burgers on the top of the Eiffel Tower and dropping fries on tourists.

Then he took her to Ireland, where they got caught up in no less than six bar fights and half a robbery. They won four of them, with the last two being called a draw when it turned out the other guys were a pack of Puca just enjoying themselves.

Deanna was planning to conclude the evening with an athletic nightcap, when her phone rang.

"Hello?"

"You need to come home right now!" her brother's voice held the steady tone of one about to panic.

She felt Cas's hand on her shoulder, and the couple blinked from Russia to Bobby's living room in South Dakota.

"Sam, what's wrong?"

"Mary's vanished," he said, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

"What." Her voice held equal threat and disbelief.

"I was just about to put her to bed, and she teleported out of my hands!"

Deanna blinked. "Teleport?" She looked at her partner. "Did my baby just make her first teleportation, and I missed it?"

The angel frowned, running a hand over the air. "That is not what happened here."

"Really? Because I'm pretty sure I saw Mary vanish from the couch," Sam snarked, bitch face in full effect.

"She didn't teleport." Castiel met Deanna's gaze. "Apparently Mary has discovered the ability to transverse dimensions."

Deanna opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, paused, then said. "That is so awesome. But she is in so much trouble when we find her. We can find her, right?"

The angel nodded. "Mary is still young. She is unusually powerful for a nephilim, most likely due to my strength as a seraph and your line's compatibility with grace as vessels. However, she left rather obvious runs in the fabric between universes, which we can follow."

"Awesome." The huntress crossed to her brother and pulled the knife from his belt to tuck into her own pants. "We'll have words on your ability to babysit when we get back," she promised, before linking arms with her partner.

...

"Where are we?" The huntress squinted around at the faded motel interior, like a person returning to an old apartment. Familiar and slightly disdainful.

"The year is 2004, some time in early summer."

Deanna wrinkled her nose. "I hated that year."

"Mary does not seem to be here anymore. However, your counterpart appears to be approaching."

Right on cue the doorknob rattled, and a tall man in a leather jacket stumbled in, smelling strongly of whiskey. The stranger made it halfway across the room, before noticing the couple. Hazel-green eyes took a moment to focus, but when they did, he leered.

"Sorry, wrong room. I'll just-" the man made towards the door, but tripped and sprawled out on the bed.

Deanna scrutinized the man, mouth twisting in a mixture of approval and irksome recollection. "Is that...?"

The angel nodded. "This is your counterpart in this universe."

"So here I'm a guy."

Castiel tilted his head, eyes squinting. "It appears so."

"And this universe is completely the same other than that? And we're in the past?"

"Yes."

An unholy grin spread across the woman's face as she rounded on her collapsed counterpart. "Hey man, wanna know the future?"

"I am not drunk enough for this," Dean gurgled, slumped against the bed's headboard.

The huntress threw a pillow at him. "Quit your whining and pay attention."

"Hey! What the hell lady!"

Deanna growled in the back of her throat, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. "Cas, sober him up."

The angel placed two fingers against the man's forehead. Dean flinched away with a pained groan.

"What the heck did you just do to me?"

"Gave you a wakeup call," Deanna said, pulling the young man by his flannel lapels. "Now listen up, some heavy stuff is going to go down soon, and you're going to be right in the middle of it."

"What?"

Deanna shook him. "Shut up and listen. Sam's girl Jess is going to be burned up by Yellow Eyes, who is a demon. Call Bobby about devil traps and anti-possession tattoos. Elkton has the colt, it can kill demons. There's a shapes shifter in St. Louis, don't let it steal your face, because FBI interrogations suck. Samuel Colt made a giant devil trap, there's a hellmouth in the center. He's going to try to kill Sammy and a bunch of other psychic kids at Cold Oaks. Don't let that happen. And if you ever find yourself in hell, keep saying no, or you'll cause the end of the world."

Green eyes met green. "Lady, I have no idea what you're talking about."

The huntress growled. "I'm you from a parallel dimension and the future. Demons are after Sam and will kill Jess. Stop it." She let go of his shirt, and he slumped back onto the bed. "And for Cas's sake, clean yourself up! Dad's a dick for leaving you without a word, but that's no reason to let yourself go like this. If you want someone to hunt with, ask Bobby about a kid named Garth. I think he's killed the tooth fairy by now."

She crossed the room to her angel's side. "Now, if you'll excuse us, I have to find my baby girl, who has just hit the lottery for weirdest X-men power."

With that said Deanna looped her arm through Castiel's and bamphed away.

Dean blinked at the previously vacated space for a few minutes, before pinching his arm. It hurt, which probably meant this wasn't a dream. Quickly before he forgot any details, the hunter transcribed the strange conversation into his journal.

He would refer back to the entry with bemused confusion for many years to come.

...

A wave of sound slammed into Deanna like a brick wall. "Where are we?" She screamed over the hubbub.

"San Diego." Castiel's voice carried without effort, probably from some grace related superpower. "There appears to be no supernatural creatures or magic in this universe."

The huntress glanced around at the sea of screaming people, whose attentions were focused on a stage where a disembodied voice was announcing a string of seemingly nonsensical trivia about whoever was about to come on. "Why would Mary come here?"

"I believe our daughter wished to go to a place where her parent's achievements were recognized."

"What?"

The angel's words were cut off by the amplified announcer. "And here he is, the star of Supernatural, Jensen!"

Deanna held her hands to her ears, but had already lost the ability to hear. A high pitched whine permeated her eardrums over the physical presence the audience's screams made.

A familiar face walked onto the dais, this time sporting a beard and a wide carefree smile, instead of a drunken stupor.

The hunter watched as the panel commenced, eyebrows progressively getting higher. When the speaker, Jensen, left, after an hour of the strangest questions Deanna had ever heard, she looked around bemused at the screaming audience.

"So apparently, not only am I a dude, but I'm an actor who plays me in a TV show." Deanna grinned. "Awesome."

...

"Little girl, about this big." She held a hand just below her waist. "Black hair, green eyes, goes by the name of Mary."

"She has a tendency to shatter windows when upset," Castiel chimed in.

Deanna nodded. "Oh yeah. She also likes to levitate to the top of the fridge, where the cookie jar is."

The dark haired man tipped down his sunglasses. "Oh, that kid." He drained his tumbler of whisky. "Yeah, she's outside playing hopscotch with the Hulk."

"I am pleased that she is making new friends," Castiel rumbled.

The other man laughed. "You could say that. Afterwards I hear she's set up a tea party with Loki and Thor."

...

Deanna tilted her head from side to side, examining the heavenly figure. "So you're an angel, but you're not possessing this universe's version of me, you are me. And I'm a dude again."

The man nodded, examining her with equal interest. "This vessel is a soldier named Michael, who lived in Texas."

"And Castiel?"

"The vessel of the archangel James."

"Huh." She shook her head. "Right, well, we're looking for our daughter."

...

"I am god," the gaunt version of Castiel said. Black veins creeped along his neck like cancer.

Deanna's Cas growled so lowly, she could feel it rumble through the arm he used to hold her behind his back.

God-stiel tilted his head with a creepy smirk. "You are afraid of me."

"You are an abomination," the angel of Thursday snarled.

"You're lucky you're me, otherwise I wouldn't let you get away with saying that."

...

"Your child's father is a Maiar?" Elrond said, eyes widening a fraction.

"Yeah. Cas got caught up in some kind of inter-dimensional toll road. They called it Eressea?"

The elf gaped. When he refrained the power of speech, he cleared his throat. "Yes, Your daughter was here several moons ago. However, she vanished after a party of dwarves passed through. I believe she might have left with them, as she seemed quite taken with one of the princes."

"Awesome!" the hunter cheered. "Now, where did you say they were headed again?"

After Castiel broke free of inter-dimensional immigration, the couple was invited to a feast.

One night of elven revelry later, where Deanna managed to drink three elves under the table ("This wine has nothing of Bobby's rotgut.") the human angel angel bid their hosts farewell, and flew off to the Lonely Mountain.

"Hi," Deanna brightly greeted the first being she saw. "I'm looking for my daughter. About yay big, looks like this guy, but with my eyes."

Castiel loomed intimidatingly behind his partner.

The blonde man, dwarf the hunter supposed, grinned broadly. "Ah, the baby Kholoh! I would be happy to take you to her, fine Master and Mistress!" He spun on his heel and led the duo through the battlefield into the mountain.

"Kili! These are the parents of your little wife!"

"I wish you wouldn't call her that," the dark haired dwarf groaned, burying his face in his hands.

The blonde clapped his brother on the shoulder. "Why? She clearly thinks the world of you!"

Castiel's eyes narrowed. "Oh really."

...

"Gadreel? Abner?"

"Oh my goodness, no one has called me that in ages," the blonde fluttered.

"The name's Crowley," the man in the business suit hissed.

...

"Lord Dream," the angel inclined his head.

"Daniel, please," the young man said. "You are the parents of Mary, are you not?"

"Yes."

"She and Delirium were entertaining themselves by turning the clouds into rainbow tasting turtles."

"Is she still here?"

White haired head shook. "No. She mentioned trying to find her way home."

...

Deanna threw the doppleganger against the wall, arm at its throat. "Alright, now where's my baby."

"Deanna." Castiel placed a calming palm on her shoulder. "He is unable to communicate if he cannot respirate."

The huntress loosened her grip and the man slid back to the floor.

"Geeze lady, what is your problem!" The man coughed, massaging his neck. He looked at the seraph. "Cas, what the hell?"

Another trench coated angel appeared in a flutter of wings. He looked between the grappling hunters and angel. His brows furrowed, followed by a head tilt.

Deanna released the man completely to stand in front of her seraph.

"Ma!" a tiny voice squealed, running out from behind parallel-Cas's legs.

"Mary!" The hunter swept the toddler into her arms. "You are in so much trouble, baby girl!" She cried, kissing the child's black curls furiously.

Daddy-Cas crooned something in Enochian. Mary giggled and wriggled into her father's arms. Parallel-Cas stepped close, hand raised. "May I?"

The dimension traveler stared into his counterpart's soul. A moment of communication stretched between them, before the father nodded. "Make sure to support her back," he said, passing over the child.

"We should let the angels have a moment," Dean said, pulling Deanna out of the room.

Once safely away from the celestial beings, he pulled his counterpart conspiratorially close. "Right, so what's the last big thing to happen with you? Apocalypse? Leviathan? Eve?"

The huntress leaned back in her chair. "When did we get a batcave?"

"Hey," Dean snapped. "Focus."

The woman scowled. "Other than my daughter running away, you mean?" She exhaled roughly. "I had a dinner date with Death to get Sam out of the cage-"

"Don't let him scratch the wall!"

Deanna blinked at the outburst.

"Seriously, it's bad news."

She eyed him warily. "All right then." Memories of the last few weeks filed themselves to the forefront of her mind. "Crowley is unfortunately still alive, Raphael is still strung out in court by the principalities, and Balthazar is never allowed in my house again. Yeah, that about sums up the major stuff."

A bewildered expression crossed Dean's face. "Raphael's in court?"

"Not yet. I think they're drawing his case out for as long as they can."

Dean shook his head. "Now that's a weird thought. But listen, this is important." He lifted up his sleeve, exposing an angry red burn, shaped like a rune. "If someone tries to give you this, you run the other way, you hear?"

Deanna examined the mark. "What is it?"

"Bad news. It makes you stronger, but at one hell of a cost. Literally."

"Yikes."

Elsewhere in the bunker, two and a half angels contemplated each other.

Parallel-Cas looked deep into the little girl's green eyes.

Mary giggled, and threw her arms around his neck.

He started, then ponderously shifted his grip to embrace her back.

"She is beautiful," he said to the girl's father.

"Yes," the other angel agreed. "Have you and Dean not-?"

"No. Humans are attached to the stigmas and social norms associated with their physical forms." He bounced the baby in his arms. She squealed, rattling the surrounding bookshelves. "I believes that limits the extent of the emotions they are allowed to feel for each other."

Daddy-Cas tilted his head contemplatively. "Humans are strange."

"Yes."

The angels heard footsteps coming down the hall, and turned to greet the two Righteous Persons.

"Wow, she's beautiful," Dean said, the corners of his eyes crinkling into a smile.

"Best thing I've ever made," Deanna agreed, hands on her hips.

"Can I?"

"Sure!"

The make hunter grinned and approached the little girl, still held in the arms of Parallel-Cas.

"Hey there baby girl! Wanna let me hold you for a bit?" He stretched out his arms to take her.

Mary screamed, shattering the bunker's lights, and vanished in a whirl of black curls.

"What happened?" Deanna snarled, rounding on her doppleganger with the knife already pulled from the small of her back. "What did you do to my baby?"

"It must have been the mark," parallel-Cas rumbled. "Dean did not have his sleeves rolled up before. Mary must have seen it and fled."

Dean looked stricken, his hands shaking as he rushed to pull down his flannel shirt.

Daddy-Cas snapped to glare at his counterpart. "The what?"

"The mark is full of Darkness." Parallel-Cas shrugged. "I imagine seeing it would scare such a small child."

Deanna was practically foaming at the mouth. "Cas! She must be so scared! We gotta go! NOW!"

The seraph nodded seriously, looping an arm around her waist. The couple vanished.

Dean shared a look with his friend, face drawn and pale as he laughed humorously.

"Even my own kid can't look at me with this thing on my arm. That's just..." He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and looked away, blinking hard.

"We will find a way to fix it. I promise."

The hunter hunched into himself. "Somehow, I don't think that will make this any better."

...

Surroundings swirled in monochrome rainbows of concepts and half thought ideas.

Deanna rubbed her eyes.

A figure broke the flat landscape nearby. To Deanna, it looked willowy, but without the roots, and featureless, despite the ideas of limbs and a mouth shadowed over the gold shine of an afternoon sunbeam. In the things arms, Mary gabbled animatedly, tugging at the four feathery protrusions from its back. The figure seemed more a captive audience than captor.

The hunter rubbed her eyes again. The child's skin glowed with some internal turquoise light, which somehow related to the being which held her. She shook her head, throwing off the thought as she rushed forward.

"Mary!"

The toddler looked over her shoulder. "Ma!"

The golden light made no resistance as Deanna swept the child into her arms.

"Baby girl, are you all right?" the mother crooned, clutching her daughter to her chest. She looked her straight in the eye, green mirroring green. "You are never allowed to scare me like that again."

"Ma!" the tiny girl squealed again, the turquoise glow brightening as she drank in the attention.

"So you are Ma?" the light asked. It's gaze danced between the two females in wonder.

Deanna shifted her daughter to one hip, freeing one hand to casually rest against the knife at her back. "Yeah, I'm Mary's mother."

It stepped closer into the hunter's personal space. "You and she are beautiful. What are you?"

"I'm human," the woman said slowly, internally questioning just where the hell she was where a human was unrecognizable.

"Human," it tasted the word.

Deanna wanted to back up a step, but didn't want to seem intimidated by this strange golden humanoid. It had an even worse concept of personal space than-

"Da!" Mary squealed, wriggling from her mother's arms to crawl towards another vaguely biped shade of light.

This new figure was at a frequency just above violet in the rainbow, but too rich to be called simply navy. It lowered itself to sweep the tiny girl into its arms.

"Daughter," it rumbled in a familiar growl.

"Cas?" Deanna squinted at the figure. "Why do you look like that?"

The idea of too blue eyes settled on her. "You are placing your perceptions upon a portion of my true self."

"Wait, if that is your real form, then shouldn't my eyeballs be melting?"

"Deanna, you are not currently wearing a physical body. You soul cannot be harmed by seeing us as we are."

"Wait, so I'm dead?"

Castiel shook his head. "No, matter just has not been...conceptualized yet here."

"Awesome." Deanna sighed, retrieving Mary from her father's embrace. The toddler grumbled, but soon settled with drooping eyelids against her mother's shoulder.

The golden light fluttered, scrutinizing the family. "The little one is apart of you," it said questioningly to Castiel. "Both of you. But it is not a sibling. What is it?"

"She is my daughter."

The other angel adopted the posture of confusion. Castiel's wings clacked together thoughtfully.

"She is-" and here he spewed a string of Enochian Deanna would need three other sets of vocal chords to repeat, as well as several other sensory organs to properly comprehend.

The gold figure gaped when he was done. "Truly?"

Castiel nodded.

It looked upon Mary and her mother with worshipful awe.

Deanna could feel baby drool seeping through her flannel shirt. Careful not to disturb the sleeping body, she laid a hand on her partner's vaguely shoulder shaped feature. "Cas, we should head home. It's been a long day, and I know Mary's not the only one who could use a nap."

He nodded, and looked back to the golden light. "I apologize sibling, we must depart."

It inclined its head respectfully. "While little Mary has provided a most memorable distraction, I too myst return to my duties. We have yet to complete scouring the Darkness from the edges of what will become reality, and Mik'hael requires me to relay messages between the different garrisons."

"May your flight be true," Castiel intoned, almost nostalgically.

"As well to you," the messenger smiled, before vanishing with a flap of its six wings.

Deanna intertwined her free hand with her partner's, examining his replacement of recognizable features for the ineffable. The angel tilted his head in a familiar gesture, navy glow flickering with unasked queries. She smiled. "How did I end up with such a good looking wavelength of celestial intent?"

The feathers along his pinions fluffed out.

The hunter chuckled. "What did you call Mary back there to that other angel?"

Castiel's wings curled around her back. "There is no direct translation in English, but the idea of the sentiment is something similar to 'an act of joint creation forming a beloved being greater than the sum of the initial two parts.' The word daughter has no meaning in the universe yet, so I had to improvise."

"Hm," Deanna hummed. "It sounded like a wave breaking against a shore of wind chimes."

"I could teach you some phrases, if you wish," he said, preparing to fly them back to the Singer Salvage Yard, where hopefully two beds waited for tired occupants.

"Nah," she yawned. "But I think Mary would like it. Give her a bit more of your side of the family to hold on to."

"I would like that." And with that said, the angel swept his family back to their home for a well earned rest.

...

...

A/N:

Ok, places Mary travels to:

Cannon, before season 5 finale

Real world at a supernatural convention

AU where Dean is an angel and Cas is a hunter

God-stiel universe

Avengers

Lord of the Rings. Eressea is another name for the undying lands, where all the gods and spirits live with the elves and the dead. Kholoh means hero in dwarvish. Fili calls Mary a little hero, because the baby's angelic nature makes her inclined to flash smite goblins which make the mistake of attacking her or anyone she likes.

good omens. My head cannon has Gadreel and Abner as spn counterparts for Aziraphale and Crowley.

sandman

Cannon, just before the season 10 finale

The past, before the creation of creation, when angels walked the ideas of things to yet exist. And yes, Gabriel did just meet his niece and sister in law.

Mary is one month short of two years old, as slice girls takes place in March.


	8. Chapter 8

...

S7.5AU

...

Bobby finally gives in and builds and extension onto the house, after tripping over Sam splayed out on the floor at the foot of the stairs for the second time.

"This house wasn't meant to hold so many dang people," he grumbled through a mouth of nails.

"Perhaps if you simply removed some of the books there would be enough room," said Castiel, who was helpfully holding up the new roof, while the older man nailed sigils into the eaves.

"Shut your trap," Bobby growled in response.

Sam was off with Garth investigating a mysterious murder in a town full of fake psychics.

Deanna laid on the couch, six phones splayed around her, daughter snoozing on her chest, completely bored out of her mind.

...

"What?" Deanna bolted upwards in bed, hands scrabbling to disentangle the blanket from around her legs. "Right, Amazons- I'll be there in," she calculated distances while pulling on her boots, "Ten hours."

"Cas!" the huntress screamed as she scrambled to pack her bag. "I have to go help on a case! You have to watch Mary!"

The angel had just enough time to poke his head around the nursery corner and wave, before his partner was gone.

The next morning, the huntress slumped over a cup of coffee while Sam explained the case of men being murdered a few nights after going to some bar. She spent the rest of the day napping.

That night, while her brother investigated the bar, the last clue fell into place, and she knew where the monsters were hiding. Of course, Sam decided to not answer his phone.

Usually Deanna would wait for backup, but she had been suffering cabin fever for almost two years, and was chomping at the bit something fierce.

So she booked it to the empty warehouse turned monster headquarters.

Kicking in the door, she didn't have enough time to look around, before a snarling figure leapt at her. They wrestled on the floor, fighting over the short sword clutched in the monster's fist.

The hunter's blood sang as she elbowed the Amazon in the eye, stunning her long enough to snatch the blade and chop off her head.

A sharp gasp interrupted the haze of bloodlust. Deanna looked up. Six sets of eyes, audience to her murder, blinked fearfully back.

She looked at the gaggle of little girls, who had yet to break formation, despite their clan leader's blood coating her blade.

Their wide eyes watched the hunter as she straightened. She looked at them, in their pink light up sneakers and barbie rolling suitcases. They didn't look older than ten.

"Do you kids have parents?"

One little girl, with straight blonde hair, shook her head. "Our mothers left us here to be trained. Our fathers won't know about us, until we kill them."

A knife twisted in Deanna's gut. She cleared her throat. "What's your name, sweetie?"

"Emma."

"Emma, do you and your sisters have anywhere to go?"

The girl shook her head. "The rest of the clan has probably left already, what with you having found us."

Deanna reached up to run a hand over her mouth, but grimaced when she remembered it was covered in blood. She tried to wipe the worst off on her flannel, but only succeeded in smearing it across her fingers further. "Right. Pack up your bags, I'm getting you kids out of here."

"So you're our new den-mother?" another girl, her brown hair in pigtails, asked.

"Sure sweetie, if you want me to be."

Back at the motel, Sam stood in the doorway, completely at a loss for words.

Six faces stared at him, clustered on what was once his bed. Deanna grinned sheepishly. "Look what followed me home. Can I keep them?"

When the band returned to the salvage yard, the house's other adult occupants took Deanna's impromptu adoption rather well.

"I'll go get the hammer and nails," Bobby grumbled, resigned to providing a home for six more wayward kids.

"And I'll key them into the wards," Castiel said, following the old hunter out.

...

The Amazon girl's aging finally began to slow to a regular pace when each of them appeared to be about eighteen years old. They seemed to have adopted Deanna as their clan leader, and followed her every direction with frightening precision.

They doted entirely on little Mary, seemingly fascinated by her continued childhood form, despite how many weeks had passed. The littlest Winchester took their worship as her due, and practically ran the group ragged with her seemingly limitless supply of energy.

Deanna was just glad she had a troupe of super powered babysitters to watch her kid, especially when she figured out how to consciously teleport.

Freaking nephilim, she thought affectionately.

They were equally fascinated with the growing bulge of Deanna's stomach, reverently fetching her salads and vegetables (seriously, was her new baby the incarnation of her brother? All this rabbit food craving was killing her!), and making sure she didn't stress herself around the salvage yard.

The hunter batted the girls off at first, but as the months wore on, was more than a little grateful for the help.

There was some clashing cultural norms at first, but Cas was rather used to powerful women stabbing him in the chest, and didn't mind too much. Deanna managed to explain that while a girl might be tempted to knife a man at certain times, usually it took more than a first meeting to reach that kind of sever emotion.

She also set them up with some of the golden age Wonder Woman comics, just to try to give then a new perspective. She laughed herself to sleep when she overheard Emma discussing the logistics of buying an island, and whether the sentimental value of columns could be excused in place of a bomb shelter or apartment complex.

Sam was fascinated with the clan. They tolerated his existence, after Deanna impressed upon them how they were not allowed to harm him, no matter how dumb he could be.

The younger Winchester handled the girl's education, infinitely delighted with how quickly they learned concepts and skills. Within a week he had them all sitting for their GEDs. One of the girls, Sarah, even seemed interested in college, and began taking online courses.

Deanna taught the girls about hunting, and how to hide the way their eyes flared red when the adrenalin got pumping. Foundation could work wonders.

So the little family and extended family settled into an efficient routine.

Till the mother's nine months were up.

...

Robert James Winchester, affectionately called Jim-bob by his older sister, had soft blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.

Deanna crowed happily about one of her baby's finally getting their daddy's looks, even as she snuggled both children close to her heart.

Castiel filed his partner's exuberance under 'strange human things', his arms and wings wrapped snugly around his family. The trio of souls under his feathers shined so brightly, he was tempted to shut his eyes. He didn't, though. How could he look away from something so beautiful?

...

"Bobby, really?" Balthazar snarked, tickling Jim-bob's nose with his feathers. "I would have named him something regal, like Sebastian. Much more befitting of an angel."

"What are you doing in my house?" Deanna growled.

"Can't I visit my only, and by default favorite, nephew?"

"No."

"Well would you believe I'm here on business?"

The huntress dug around the bookshelf for holy oil. "Also no."

Balthazar rolled his eyes, taking a step back from the baby's pillow fort on the couch. " I would say you should relax and get laid, but I think Castiel would murder me for offering. Speaking of which, where is the old vulture?"

"Mary got a book on stars, so Cas took her to the Eagle Nebula to show her his favorites."

"Ah, well when he gets back, tell him that I want his opinion on a new consulting firm I've decided to put together."

Deanna was interested despite herself, and turned from her quest to deep fry an angel. "Consulting? On what?"

"Why, humanity, of course!" the blonde grinned, showing all his teeth. "You wouldn't believe how many of my siblings upstairs wouldn't know the difference between a paperclip and good gin. Some other angels were sent down here for community service as well- you know minor miracles and answered prayers- and they went about it all the wrong way! So I think to myself, how many favors from here until eternity can I rack up if I help the lost pigeons fit in down here a bit better? Then wallah! My own little startup took root."

He smirked, pleased with himself. Jim gurgled, drooling on his feathers.

Deanna's eyebrows rose. She nodded her head slightly. "I admit, I'm impressed."

"Thank you, I'm constantly surprised by my own brilliance!"

The hunter's hand twitched towards the holy oil, momentary respect completely gone.

...

"Believe it or not I'm walking on air~"

Deanna smiled quietly to herself and closed the nursery door.

With her back against the wood, she could still make out a deep angelic voice singing their son to sleep.

"Flying away on a wing and a prayer, who could it be~?"

...

A hunt in Indiana with reports of strange noises and moving objects sounded like a nice vacation from teenage Amazons, two paranoid humans, an angelic mother hen, and her kids.

Not that Deanna did not love her family more than life itself (literally), but sometimes she could use a nice spirit infested house to unwind.

Unfortunately, when she got to the supposed haunting, it wasn't a ghost that she found.

A figure sat huddled in the corner of an upstairs bedroom, unnaturally still and clearly very solid and non-spectral. Deanna cautiously approached, gun drawn.

"Hey buddy, you ok?" She called.

The being looked up, brown eyes lit with a holy light, before it ducked its head back down.

Deanna relaxed her grip on the weapon. She recognized that light, and a simple gun wouldn't do much against an angel. She spoke again.

"Shouldn't you be in heaven with the rest of the d- angels?"

The being shook its head, knees drawing further to its chest.

Poor kid looked just like Mary after a nightmare; toes curling close in terror and miserable as a puddle in the sahara. Deanna softened her voice.

"Sweetie, you ok?" She didn't risk reaching out to the figure; angels could be volatile at the best of times, in her experience.

Her motherly tone seemed to stir something in the shivering body. It spoke, voice cracking and hoarse.

"I am trapped by the freedom to do anything I want to in this life." The angel curled tighter around itself, its vessel's hands pressing into its eyes, as if to block out the vastness of the world.

Deanna ran a hand over her lips. "This is way above my pay grade." She knelt down by the angel. "What's your name?"

The angel, wearing a male vessel, looked up at her blearily. "Remiel."

"Right, Remiel. Why don't you come and have lunch with me?"

"I do not require sustenance."

"That's not the point." She tugged at its arm. "Now come on."

She pulled the gangly angel to its feet and across the road to the town's local diner. Pushing her companion into a red plastic booth in the corner, she smiled at the waitress and took a pair of menus.

"Ok, so here's lesson one to learning free will." Deanna gestured at the list of courses. "What do you want for lunch?"

Remiel blinked at the words, eyes focusing away from the mental void they had occupied. "But I do not require-" he started, but Deanna cut him off.

"Not the point. Get something."

She managed to coax the celestial being into telling her how long he had been squatting in the empty house. Unfortunately his numbers did not line up with the sightings of a ghost, so the hunt was still on.

Remiel followed her around like a puppy for the rest of the case.

He fetched her books from the reference section of the library, paid attentive attention as she expounded the virtues of rock salt rounds, and even held her lighter as she tossed kerosine on the ghost's bones.

The angel only lost his infatuated stare when Deanna finally put in a call to Cas. Remiel's discomfort only grew when said angel appeared in the motel parking lot, holding a squirming bundle of nephilim.

"Mommy!" Mary squealed, leaping from her father's arms to latch onto her mother's leg.

Remiel watched the exchange, brows furrowed. The angel's wings shifted hungrily, but were stilled by the sharp blue eyed gaze of the seraph now standing across from him.

"Jim is taking his nap, under the watch of Emma. I came as soon as I could," Castiel leaned towards his partner, unseen feathers brushing against her soul. Remiel took a step back at the possessive gesture, fear creeping into the corners of its being. Castiel smirked at his threat being acknowledged.

Deanna picked up her daughter and leaned over to kiss her partner on the cheek. "Was Mary behaving?"

"Like an angel."

"I wasn't that bad!" the little girl protested.

Deanna laughed and kissed her temple. "We'll talk about it when we get home." She turned to the figure standing hesitantly behind her. "Cas, this is Remiel. He's experiencing an existential crisis." She waved the hand not supporting her daughter on her hip. "Please tell me you can take care of this?"

The seraph rounded on the angel, shoulders set as he loomed over the lesser being. "I believe I can handle him."

"Thanks. Did you bring Baby?"

"The car is in the diner parking lot." Blue eyes never left Remiel's cowering form.

"Awesome. I'll see you at home then," Deanna said, walking away. Mary waved over her mother's shoulder as they vanished around the corner.

A light breeze ghosted through the air, causing the trench coat's lapels to flutter.

"So, you have been spending time with my partner."

"She was very kind to me in my distress." The other angel made no threatening move, so Remiel continued to press his luck. "Her soul is very beautiful."

Castiel's eyes narrowed.

Remiel's wings fluttered in expectant terror. "I mean her insight into the philosophical management of free will was inspiring in its simplicity."

The seraph's lips thinned.

"I am very grateful for her help..." The lesser angel's voice trailed off, cowering.

The breeze blew by again. Remiel shivered.

"I think," Castiel said, voice low like distant thunder, "That you should go."

...

A week later found Deanna standing at the gate of the salvage yard, gaping at the crowd of celestial beings at her doorstep.

The angels knelt in a half circle around the increasingly flustered hunter. "Mater et domina," they whispered reverently.

Deanna rubbed a hand across her reddening face. "What are you guys doing?"

"You are the mother of the new age," the flock's spokesperson said. "Our brother Remiel explained to us the truths which you expounded for him. We are at your service. Please guide us."

"Uh," Deanna ran a hand over her lips. "Right. Just," she waved vaguely to the side. "Just go wait in the garage."

The group shuffled away, save one blonde haired woman dressed as a librarian.

The hunter eyed her. "Hi. Are you with the rest of the Brady bunch over there?"

"No." The blonde smiled thinly. "My name is Atropos."

"Nice to meet you, but if you're going to stare at me with stars in your eyes, I'll have to ask you to join the others in the shed."

Atropos shrugged. "My sisters are being detained as expert witnesses for the defense. Until that's done, I have no where else to go. All the other angels think you've got all the answers for the future. So until someone upstairs reopens my department and tells me what's going on, I figure, what the hell."

She opened her thick leather tome, and plucked a red feather from beside her gold tasseled bookmark. "So, what's going to happen?"

"Listen, lady," Deanna said, crossing her arms. "I don't have time for this. Mary's coming back from her first day of day-care, and Cas is going to be in stitches making sure the school is properly warded. On top of that, I have to make sure a bunch of teenage girls don't go feral and ritually sacrifice the next guy they see. So, unless you can help me with that, I suggest you get your feathery butt back upstairs, because I've got nothing for you."

The angel's quill scratched a note against the book's vellum. Her eyes ticked upwards to meet the hunter's. "I would recommend starting with getting more groceries, as you're almost out of bread."

"What?" Deanna made a move towards the house. "No, I just bought some!"

"Your Amazons have been trying to feed the other angels."

"Awesome." The taller woman ran a hand across her face with a sigh. "Anything else I should know before my household falls apart?"

Atropos smiled thinly. "Why yes, yes there is."

The hunter ran a hand over her lips. "Right, I guess you can come inside."

...

The dark haired woman righted Castiel's trench coat collar, her fingers lingering a moment too long.

Deanna's eyes narrowed as she watched them through the window. Her face bloomed into an artificially wide smile as the pair walked up the front steps and knocked on the door.

"You're back early," she grinned, pulling her partner down into a passionate kiss.

The woman's blue eyes went wide as the scene of affection continued in front of her. When Deanna finally had to come up for air, Castiel looked slightly dazed, his tie turned right side out and his hair more windswept than usual.

"Come on, I made pie." The hunter guided her seraph into the house, arm around his waist. She spared a moment to shoot a glacial smile at the frozen angel on the doorstep. "Oh, you can come too. What was your name again?"

"H-Hannah," the other woman stuttered.

The smile turned sharp. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Hannah. Unfortunately I didn't make enough pie for guests. Next time you should check in with Atropos to make an appointment before stoping by to see us."

"Yes ma'am," the angel nodded, eyes still wide, with a hint of terror stirring in their depths.

...

"Told m'friends at daycare that my Daddy was an archangel, and they all laughed at me," Mary pouted.

Deanna thought about that for a moment, mulling the idea around in her mind, before shaking her head. "We still don't make the lights explode in the classroom, baby girl."

...

Castiel frowned. "Do not take that tone with me, Mary Joellen Winchester. Just wait till your mother gets home!"

"What? No!" the little girl cried, black curls fluttering as she shook her head.

...

The Amazon girls were strangely fixated on Samandriel, whenever the little guy flew by for an update with the other Deanna worshiping angels.

Sam speculated that the girls, bodies raging with teenage hormones and the monster-born imperative to have children at barely two years of age, would naturally start to become interested in boys. He further speculated that as Deanna was their only female role model, the girls would naturally see her relationship as the perfect example of what they should have.

"They probably see Cas as the ideal partner," the younger Winchester said, bouncing little Mary on his knee as they sat on the couch. "So, they'll try to find guys who are as like him as they can."

Deanna, who was in the middle of feeding Jim-bob, shot her brother an odd look. "Wait, so they all want angel boyfriends?"

"That's what it looks like."

She sighed. "Awesome."

...

...

A/N:

Mater et domina: mother and master/lord in latin

Mary is 2yrs 2 months old by the end of S7

Mary was put into daycare, because Sam thinks she needs to socialize with other children her own age.

Deanna adopted six Amazons: Emma, Sarah, Emily, Amy, Carol, and Kayleigh. She is not Emma's biological parent, unlike Dean in cannon.


	9. Chapter 9

...

...

...S8

...

...

Life settled into an easy routine.

Sam, who had always preferred the behind the scenes aspects of hunting, was happy to loose the reigns to fieldwork, in place of sequestering himself in Bobby's library to research whatever information the teams or other hunters might need.

Deanna, when she wasn't beating away angels who wanted to wait on her hand and foot, occasionally headed a small team consisting of Emma and two of her sisters to the most difficult or interesting hunts. The huntress fell into the role of general, easily keeping her troops under control. Mostly she occupied herself by doting on her children and fixing up collector cars.

When not observing Deanna's hunting style, the three Amazons were put in charge of their own teams of three (two Amazons, one angel or human) with which to hunt. The girls were, unsurprisingly, very good at it.

Atropos, with her god given attention to detail, earned her keep by organizing the various teams of Amazons and angels to various hunts across the globe. The fate could be usually found at Deanna's elbow, listing various household and hunting related tasks needed to keep their operation running.

Castiel, bless his wings, still spent a large portion of time working in the courts of heaven. However, he had impressed upon his lawyers the need to spend time with his mortal family on earth, and had much more flexible hours.

Jim was a much calmer baby than his sister, and spent the majority of his time sleeping. Occasionally Cas would take his son for a day trip to heaven, where he would snooze against his father's wings while the lawyers squabbled.

Mary, going on three years old, seemed to take perverse pleasure in causing her babysitters heart attacks. For instance, while her parents were away at work, the toddler thought it a great idea to teleport herself on another whirlwind adventure.

Emma, nearly blind with panic, didn't know where she had gone for hours. The Amazon was just resigning herself to being sliced and smote, when Mary popped back just outside of the house's wards, holding the hand of a smarmy Cajun vampire named Benny.

The nephilim refused to let Benny out of her sight, until Deanna returned home.

The huntress took one look at how well her daughter was behaving, took the vampire aside, and threatened him within an inch of his un-life. The duo then spent a long weekend in Louisiana, returning with a trunk full of bloody machetes and matching grins.

At that point, Castiel swooped down to glower at the vampire. What was said between them, neither would ever admit. The two never really saw eye to eye. Deanna just counted it as a win when no blood was spilt when they were in a room together.

Mary was delighted at her new babysitter.

...

Deanna was investigating a hunt in Michigan, where some people running around dressed as medieval knights were being cursed by some strange tree shaped mark.

There, the huntress discovered her love of role playing, and a fiery redheaded girl named Charlie.

Not only did the computer programmer take the knowledge of the supernatural well, but she also solved the case and almost got to bang a fairy.

Deanna was ready to adopt her on the spot.

...

When Henry Winchester tumbled through a wardrobe in time, it was to find a crib in the room's corner, and a silver blade poised at his throat along with a shotgun.

"Who are you?" the short haired woman demanded, one hand on the trigger, the other holding a little girl behind her legs.

"He is your grandfather, Henry Winchester," responded the dark haired man, who was no less intimidating with a baby cradled in his sword free arm, before Henry could even open his mouth. "It appears he arrived here using some kind of time travel spell."

The hunter threw her hands up into the air. "I would appreciate it if once, just once, some disaster didn't rear its head in the middle of our family vacation!"

The closet began glowing, signaling something else coming through.

Henry's eyes widened. "Quick, we have to run! Abaddon is coming!"

"Who?"

"Abaddon is a knight of hell. Her powers are considerable, but no demon can make it past my warding," Castiel said.

Deanna rubbed her temples. "Right, zap us back home. We'll muster the troops and make a call upstairs to deal with this."

"Wait, what?" But before Henry could ask what was going on, the angel had already swept the family away.

...

"He's not supposed to be alive," Atropos said accusingly over the spine of her day planner, which had replaced the leather book for scheduling purposes.

"We're trying to make sure he stays that way," Deanna said gruffly, tugging her grandfather's arm. "At least for now."

The fate huffed. "Crowley called. He wants to thank you for releasing his number one competator for the throne of hell."

The hunter chuckled. "Remind me to send him a gift basket."

"I'll have Castiel bless the wine."

...

Henry rounded on the angel nostrils flaring. "You've put my granddaughter in a family way TWICE, and you haven't even MARRIED her?"

Castiel looked confused, brows furrowed as the Winchester patriarch loomed into his personal space. "I don't understand what that reference..."

"It means that you've sullied her honor, and don't even have the gumption to put a ring on her finger and fix it!" He growled. "It's still living in sin, even if you are an angel!"

The seraph's frown turned thoughtful. "I don't understand. Are the rings involved in some kind of purification ritual?"

The elder man's fury banked slightly, as he reminded himself that he was talking to a genderless creature who until recently didn't have a concept of taste, let alone human social norms. He crossed his arms and took a preparatory deep breath.

"Right. When a guy and a gal fancy each other and start stepping out, they can get jacketed. Then if they're still real gone for each other..."

...

Deanna buried her face in her palms, cheeks flaring red hot against her skin. She peeked between her fingers, but the shining rock twinkling innocently before her was still there.

"Cas," she choked. "You really don't have to do this."

The angel, balanced inhumanly still on his knee, one stiff arm holding a ring still held aloft, shook his head. "Your grandfather assured me that a marriage ritual is necessary for you to regain your honor. He also promised to 'total me' if we weren't 'circled' by the end of the week."

The huntress sighed, pressing the heel of her palms into her eyes. "You didn't dishonor me, geeze. This isn't the stone age. I don't need a ring to know you love me."

"Yes," Castiel agreed. "But I would like to give you one, so that every one else knows that I love you as well. You are worthy of admiration, Marisa Deanna Winchester, and I would not have you looked down upon by the ignorant due to my presence."

If anything, the woman's face flushed brighter. "...Cas," she said weakly, "You don't say stuff like that out loud."

She took the ring, silver, and jammed in onto her left hand.

Castiel rose, and pressed his cool forehead against his fiancé's. "I inscribed several wards into the band," he said lowly, holding her calloused hands between his. "They should be as effective as the ones on your ribs, should you ever become injured and they fail."

"You are such a nerd," Deanna mumbled, tilting her head to kiss him.

...

Bobby, as it turned out, was a certified Catholic priest.

"To make holy water," he grumbled.

He officiated the ceremony without needing to be asked.

Of course, since Castiel did not exist with his vessel being already married, and Deanna being declared a deceased wanted felon, the wedding was not legal.

That didn't stop the host of heaven, several bars full of hunters, a few packs of monsters, and an Irish Puca from attending the ceremony.

Deanna wore a white suit, given to her free of rent by a wedding store owner she had saved from a cursed dress. Charlie thought it looked cute, and it even had enough room under the coat to hide a knife.

Castiel was persuaded to change his trench coat and Sunday best for an outfit of sweeping pale blue and gold robes, which looked vaguely Roman in origin. When Sam asked why he chose to wear that, the seraph cited how the clothing best represented how angels of his rank were perceived by humans when they still walked the earth. Also, his siblings insisted.

The bachelorette party was awesome. Deanna couldn't remember much after the six successive strip clubs, but Charlie had pictures and subsequently enough blackmail to last through the next millennia.

When the hunter asked her brother how Cas's bachelor party went, Sam pressed a hand to his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"He left my corps in the middle of the bar for five hours when Balthazar insisted we take a pit stop in heaven for some ambrosia. We had to break into the morgue, which is really awkward when I was basically a ghost, and I was still drunk the whole time. Worst out of body experience ever."

The evening of the wedding was partly cloudy with the taste of thunder in the air. Atropos had put her considerable planning skills to the test to schedule everything perfectly, even going so far as to ward the invitations against unwanted gate-crashers.

So, in the middle of a perfectly circular grove of trees, flattened years before by an angel dragging one soul from perdition, Bobby walked Deanna down the aisle.

Benny waved at her under a parasol from the Winchester half of the audience, which consisted mostly of hunters and monsters trying not to kill each other.

The other half of the clearing overflowed with the hosts of heaven, in various states of spiritual and physical form. All mortal guests tried not to watch that side too closely, as it stretched much further than the realms of possible reality and twisted into a few more dimensions than eyes were meant to comprehend.

Mary, dressed in a fluffy turquoise dress, pulled her little brother down the carpet in a wagon, scattering flower petals as she went.

At the alter, Bobby kissed his adopted daughter on the cheek, before taking his place as the priest.

Behind Deanna, Sam and Charlie stood as her maids of honor, while Balthazar stood behind Cas as his best man.

The hunter could not remember a word of the ceremony, right up until Bobby finally slammed the bible shut.

"Well, kiss, ya idjits."

Deanna smothered her laugh against her husband's mouth. She could feel him smiling too.

...

They went on a world tour for their honeymoon.

Of course, it was slightly more involved than a normal tour, what with the supernatural powers of heaven at their disposal.

They took a boat under the Eiffel Tower in 1910 when the Seine River flooded its banks, and slew some kind of sea serpent. They also found a little cafe, and watched a giant flea monster sing on stage with a woman dressed as an angel.

Next they flew to the Antarctic for extreme skiing, before skipping off to the moons of Jupiter to make snowmen.

While watching a gladiator fight against sharks in the colosseum of ancient Rome, a red headed woman wearing sensible shoes and a leather jacket sat beside the couple. The stranger offered them a striped bag.

"Popcorn?"

Deanna blinked. The woman smiled. The hunter smiled back and took a handful of salty confections. "Sure!"

"I'm Amy Pond," the scarlet haired woman said. "And that's Rory." She indicated the centurion in the ring battling on the artificial seas.

"I'm Deanna, and this is my husband Cas." The hunter still got a thrill whenever she said that.

Amy considered the couple. "So, what brings two obviously twenty-first century people here?"

"Honeymoon."

"Through time and space?"

Deanna raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

Amy shrugged, corners of her mouth twitching. "Can't say I haven't thought of it myself."

Below, Rory punched out a shark.

"He's got nice form," Deanna complimented.

"I have better sword work," Castiel grumbled at her side.

The hunter kidded him on the cheek. "And don't I know it."

Amy laughed. "We were thinking about catching lunch in Florence in a few thousand years. Why don't you join us?"

Deanna grinned. "Sure, why not?"

So, after Rory fought his way through the arena gambit, Amy led the supernatural couple out of the colosseum to what appeared to be a bright blue telephone box.

"This is your time machine?" the hunter asked. Castiel laid a hand on the booth, brows furrowed in contemplative awe.

"Well, not ours per say. More like we're hitching a ride from a friend." Amy pushed open the door.

"Huh, it's bigger on the inside." Deanna nodded appreciatively.

"Oh, hello! Who's this?" An odd man in a bow tie appeared from behind the console, hair disheveled and clutching a spatula and a metallic green blinking device, vaguely shaped like a screwdriver.

"You are the Doctor," Castiel rumbled.

"Why yes I am! Have we met?"

"My garrison was once charged with watching your movements on earth."

"Really? How did that work out for you?" The Doctor grinned, ducking back down with his tools.

The soldier shrugged. "As well as can be expected."

"So is Cas a time traveler?" Amy stage whispered to Deanna.

"No, he's an angel."

An almighty smash resounded through the phone booth, as the Doctor dropped his spatula. "What? Angel? Where?" Sonic screwdriver flashed green as it swept around the room.

Deanna pointed at Castiel. "Uh, right here?"

The Doctor scrutinized the trench coated figure. "No, he's a thought form of energy powering the neurons of an empty body. How are you doing that, by the way?"

Blue eyes narrowed. "I am a wavelength of celestial intent, and this is a vessel."

"Interesting!"

After that memorable introduction, the couples traveled to Florence to eat olives while watching Michelangelo drip paint into his eyes. There was also some kind of space monster eating people's memories. However, between the seraph, Roman legionnaire, police officer, and hunter, the bad guy didn't stand much of a chance.

"Look me up if you're ever anywhere near 2012," Deanna said, bumping shoulders with Amy. "We'll clean out a vampire nest. It will be awesome!"

The ginger grinned. "Sounds like a plan!"

Rory and Castiel exchanged a long suffering glance.

...

Deanna fixed Krissy Chambers with a full powered disappointed parent stare. "Look, you munchkins call us if you ever get into trouble. We've got a system down here, with angels and Amazons on call for backup."

She held out a card.

Krissy raised an eyebrow. "You have business cards?"

The hunter rolled her eyes. "Atropos printed them up."

"Uh hu." The younger woman took the card. "Looks legit."

Deanna grinned. "That's because we are. We're like the Men In Black, but better."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. We've got teams of hunters, teams of researchers, a batcave, and a supernatural help line."

The teen whistled. "Break out the decoder rings, and I might just have to sign up."

...

Metatron leaned across the cafe table. "The spell requires the heart of a Nephilim-"

Unfortunately, the scribe of god didn't get the chance to speak further, as Castiel rammed his sword through the angel's throat.

He quickly snapped the corps away before the waitress returned with the bill for his waffles.

Said waitress breathed out a sigh of relief when the angelic diner left, unaware of the metaphorical bullet and literal knife she had just dodged.

Meanwhile, Castiel put the bunker on lockdown, and refused to give Deanna a straight answer as he cuddled his family in the master bedroom.

The woman sighed, resigning herself to a day of over protective grooming and hugs as she flicked on the TV. It was about time for another movie marathon anyway.

...

...

A/N:

1950's slang

circled: married

jacketed: going steady

real gone: in love

stepping out: going out

(I've read so much Captain America fic with the old timey word smithing)

There are always stories about Dean accidentally marrying Cas, due to strange angelic traditions. I've always wanted to see a story where Cas accidentally marries Dean, because lord knows he doesn't understand humans.

So, no Leviathans means no God tablets, means no Kevin. :(

One year between S7 to S8 puts Mary at 3yrs old.

By the end of S8 she is 4 yrs old. Her brother is ~2.

Mentions of Monster in Paris and Dr. Who.


	10. Chapter 10

...

 **...**

...S9

...

"Abaddon has killed one of our teams."

Deanna's face turned stony. "Who?"

Atropos glanced at her notes. "Squirrel Squad, consisting of Sarah, Emily, and Ambriel."

The hunter closed her eyes, breathing carefully. "What happened?"

"They discovered the one of the demon's factories which was stealing and corrupting human souls. They never checked back in, although Ambriel's scream could be heard on angel radio."

"Has anyone told the others yet?"

Atropos shook her head. "It wasn't relevant."

"Of course it's relevant!" Deanna snapped, eyes burning. "I don't care how they ran things in heaven, but down here, we're family! And if you can't see that, you've got no place in it!"

The fate bowed her head, chastised. "The other angels will already know. Should I tell the girls?"

"No, I'll do it," the taller woman snapped. "You make sure that all our teams in the field know to steer clear of Abaddon. I don't want this happening again."

"Yes ma'am." Atropos closed her book and vanished.

Deanna, meanwhile, gathered up the four remaining Amazons, and whatever angels she knew were friendly with those who had died.

"If any of you, any of you, ever need to talk, my door's always open." She met the eye of each crying girl and stoic celestial being, radiating empathetic comfort.

Later Sarah and Emily's shared room was cleared of furniture, save for two swords hanging on the walls and a plethora of pictures taped beside them. A photograph of Ambriel's vessel soon joined the small shrine, as well as a crayon drawn picture of the sun.

The angels would sometimes sit in the room, contemplating how their sibling's passing effected the humans so. Soon tiny tokens, like feathers, dried flowers, and seemingly benign pieces of litter made their way into the room.

When asked, Remiel smiled softly, rubbing the striped river stone between his fingers. "It reminds me of one of my fallen siblings. We do not mourn the same way as mortals, but there is some attraction to your rituals."

...

Atropos looked at her planner. "The king of hell called again. He wants to discuss a possible alliance for dealing with Abaddon."

Deanna groaned. "Do I have to?"

The fate tilted her head. "The remaining knight of hell has been causing much destruction and damage. Our teams have been overrun trying to handle it. He could have useful information and resources."

"Enemy of my enemy," she sighed. "Awesome."

...

The principality of America smiled like a viper. "I'm here representing the parties of Marissa Winchester and the angel Castiel." She pulled out a scroll of paper. "Now, we would like to review section twelve of the contract before we sign it."

Crowley grimaced.

...

Emma had injured her shoulder hunting a rugarou, and was stuck manning the phones in an empty bunker for the week it took to heal.

Naturally, she wasn't going to suffer alone.

"Hey Charlie, guess whose got the bunker to themselves for three days, while everyone else is out on a hunt? What to have a slumber party?"

"Boy, do I!"

An hours later, the two young women giggled together over the internal wires of an ancient computer system, located in the Men of Letter's basement.

"So, do you guys have an actually have a name for your secret organization?" Charlie asked, elbow deep in the ancient computer.

Emma shrugged. "We've been calling ourselves the Associates of Letters. You know, since most of us are women, and the Men of Letters just doesn't really fit."

"That is so cool. Do you have secret decoder rings or something?"

The Amazon chuckled. "No, but I've got extra popcorn. Be back in a minute." Emma stood, tripped over a stray wire, and fell hard into a shelf.

"Oh my gosh! Are you ok?" Charlie shot to her feet.

"I'm fine," she waved off.

Neither girl noticed the dark green bottle tip over, spilling a noxious liquid.

What followed was a wild chase through the bunker, reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project. Luckily, Charlie's new totally not platonic crush Dorothy, knew a few tricks to help keep the trio alive.

Emma only really began to fear for her life when the bunker door opened unexpectedly.

"Deanna!" the young woman yelled. "You're home early!"

The hunter raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, it turned out to be an easy haunting. I brought you some get well pie." Her eyes narrowed at the flustered expressions on her charge's face. "Emma, what's going on?"

"We accidentally released the Wicked Witch from a glass bottle," Charlie panted, running into the room with Dorothy at her heels.

Deanna pinched the bridge of her nose. "The Wicked Witch of the West is loose in my house, and no one thought to call me?"

Emma shuffled her feet. "Charlie and I were going to clean it up before you got home."

"Right." Deanna sighed. "You're just lucky Cas took the kids to work with him today, otherwise you would be in so much more trouble."

"We're really sorry!"

The huntress waved her off. "Atropos, call up the garrison's radio, let everyone not on a critical hunt know about the situation and to get back here. I need at least four angels."

The fate fluttered into existence at Deanna's side. "I would recommend Remiel and Raziel. They've got the best experience with beings of the fairy realms."

"Right, let's go save Oz."

...

"This is The Colonel, he's going to be staying with us from now on."

"Puppy!" Mary squealed, hugging the German shepherd around the neck.

A smile tugged the corners of Deanna's mouth. "Now, we gotta take special care of him. He's very good dog; helped me solve a case and beat the monsters and everything."

...

One morning, Deanna got a call from an old friend.

She stared contemplatively at the phone for a few minutes, before telling Atropos to clear her schedule for a week, grabbing her brother, and hopping in the Impala.

"Simple hunt, just you and me." Sam chuckled, leaning against the passenger door. "We haven't done this in a while."

"Yep."

They pulled up in front of a worn building with faded writing on the sign.

Deanna laughed. "Man this place hasn't changed."

"Wait, so this is where you were for these months that you disappeared? But you're a girl."

Deanna nodded, eyes fixed on the boys home. "It's not like anyone knew that when I was growing up."

A light of understanding bloomed in Sam's eyes. "Oh right! Why did you dress like a boy back then, anyway?"

She shrugged, opening the Impala door. "It's not important."

The hunters approached the shabby house and knocked on the door. It was opened by a late middle aged man with brown hair and a mustache. He blinked at the strangers at his door.

Deanna grinned. "Hey Sonny!"

"Dean!" The man's face lit up as he embraced the woman in a hug.

"Good to see you too man!"

"Look at you!" Sonny said pulling back. "A respectable member of society, and is that a ring?"

Deanna showed off the silver band around her finger. "Yep! The kids are at work with their daddy."

"You should have invited me to the wedding!"

"Ah, well," the hunter rubbed the back of her head. "Cas's family can be a bit much for normal people to handle. Anyway, you said you had a case here?"

...

"There has been a high demon activity concentrated around this area, but not in it." Atropos said. "Also, a local hunter was killed, and the contents of her store safe raided. We've also found some evidence of a specialized tracking spell being used."

Deanna nodded. "Right, have the teams handle fallout in the civilian areas. Can we send an angel squad to check out the epicenter?"

"No, it's warded."

"Guess I'll just have to do it the old fashioned way."

The huntress was just pulling up in front of a white picket fence house, when she heard a shuffle in the Impala's back seat. She signed and turned off the car.

"Baby girl, you know you're not supposed to follow mommy when she goes to work," Deanna chastised. "No you fly home right this minute, young lady."

Mary pulled herself out rom her hiding space in the footwell, and pouted in the back seat of the Impala. "No."

The hunter's eyes narrowed. "Mary!"

"No!" the toddler screamed again. She pulled open the Impala's door and leapt out of the car, rushing towards the house.

"Mary!" Deanna yelled again, terror creeping into the edges of her voice. She fumbled out of her seatbelt, but the bundle of black curls had already rounded the corner. "Baby girl, you are in so much trouble," the huntress swore, creeping towards the house.

A figure in a bee suit intercepted her.

"Why are you here?" it said, voice musical and menacing.

"My daughter just ran into your house," the mother said. "An I would really appreciate it if I could get her before something shatters."

The figure took off the bee net hat, revealing a startlingly blue eyed man with long grey hair. "I didn't think you would bring your daughter into such a dangerous place as this, Mrs. Winchester."

Deanna was immediately on guard, hand clenching around the gun on her belt. "Who are you?"

The man began walking towards the house. "My name is Cain."

"Cain?" the hunter said, following cautiously.

"Yes." The duo crossed into the house. Deanna breathed out a sign of relief when she saw Mary thoroughly examining the knick-nacks and furniture in the living room. "Would you like some tea before we get down to business?"

The woman started. "Sure."

Cain nodded and went to the kitchen.

Deanna sat carefully on the patterned couch, eyeing her daughter's slow approach to the beehive. "The angels said that my family is descended from Cain and Able," she said, still watching Mary.

The older man returned carrying a tray. He placed it on the coffee table and sat across from her. "Really."

Her eyes ticked to the side. "That's what they told me, anyway. But I have a healthy distrust of celestial wavelengths of intent."

Cain leaned back against the cushions, eyes closed as he breathed. "After what occurred between my brother and myself, I did not have the right to know what happened to my nieces and daughters." His blue gaze opened to rest half ponderously on her. "Heaven was invested in my bloodline, so they would have the most accurate records."

"Ma!" Mary squealed, fingers and face pressed against the glass. "Look! Daddy's bugs!" She then broke down into a garbled mess of excited Enochian, still gesticulating fervently.

"They're called bees in English, baby girl," Deanna hummed, face lighting as she turned to her daughter. "They go buzz."

"Bees, buzz buzz!" Mary echoed, green eyes still captivated. She skipped to her mothers side, and clambered onto Deanna's knees. "Ma, can we keep these bees? I like honey."

The woman's gaze slid upwards to Cain, who had been watching the exchange with a curious look pulling the corners of his eyes. "They're not ours, baby girl. We would have to ask Mr. Cain."

Mary turned around to face the opposite couch, spirit retreating under a shell of sudden shyness. She clutched at her mother's pants, staring up with widening eyes. Her lips turned down, before she hurled herself at her mother, burying her face in Deanna's shoulder.

"His face is scary," the girl wept.

Deanna glanced at Cain, a befuddled frown spreading across her face, even as she rubbed soothing circles across her daughter's back.

"She is the angel's child," the demon said softly.

"She is my child," the hunter growled in return.

Cain tilted his head. "That means she can see me past the veil."

"Oh. OH." Deanna's grip tightened in realization. Her attention focused on the shaking figure in her arms. "Sh, sh, it's all right."

"He's all covered in red," the nephilim whispered. "And his eyes can't cry any more, because of the scars they made down his cheeks."

"I assume I'm the first demon she's encountered," Cain said gently, watching the exchange.

Deanna nodded over the bundle in her arms. "Sh, sh, baby girl. Do you want me to call Daddy, so he can explain all this to you? I'm afraid Mommy's a bit out of her depth..."

"Your angel won't be able to find you here. My house is warded."

Green eyes ticked to meet pale blue. "Awesome," she sighed, gathering her daughter into her arms as she stood. "Well, thank you for the tea. I have to get this little one home."

The demon blinked. "That's it? I assumed you were here about Abaddon."

"We were just trying to find out why your house seemed to be a blank spot for demonic activity. There's been signs all around, except here, but I guess that's due to your warding. You might want to look out incase she's looking for you."

At that moment, a loud shout rang through the house.

"Speak of the devil," Cain commented, blandly stirring his tea.

Deanna swore and looked out the window at the two trucks full of black eyed beings crowding the driveway.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no," she chanted grip becoming white around her daughter's shivering form. She checked her phone with her free hand and swore again. "Of course there's no signal."

Cain watched as the mother rocked her child, trying to calm the sympathetic whimpers. "Why not just fight them?" he asked. "That knife can certainly handle an average demon, and I've heard rumors of your skill."

"Not anywhere near my baby," she snarled. "Those demon bastards aren't even allowed to look at a single hair on her head!"

The father of murder raised an eyebrow.

Deanna huffed. "You're ok. You gave me tea, and Mary likes your house."

A complicated litany of emotions rolled across Cain's face, betraying the storm thundering inside his tattered soul. Setting down his teacup, he held out a hand.

"I can get you two out, and your car."

Green eyes shone with gratitude. "Really? What's the catch?"

"No catch," he shook his head. "Your company has been...diverting."

Deanna took his calloused hand, and felt a warm pressure of translocating air as she and her daughter were moved several miles down the road from where they started.

The hunter set the little girl down as she checked over the Impala.

Cain felt a tug on his sleeve and looked down. Mary Winchester looked up at him, green eyes peaking out behind her wild black hair. She searched the demon's face with an intensity bordering on angelic. "I'm sorry I called you scary."

"That's all right." A small smile tickled the corner of his mouth. "I do look scary don't I?"

"Yeah." The tiny girl nodded emphatically, wild hair thrown into even more disarray. "Can I come back and look at your bees?"

The demon made a move as if to smooth the strands of hair from the little girl's face, but stuffed his hands in his coat pockets instead. "If you have your mother's permission."

" 'Kay," she said, seriously, before tucking herself into the back seat of the car.

...

Deanna perused the map. "So we know Abaddon is stationed here with her main supporters. If we set up a perimeter ward, we can send in a strike team to finish her off."

"The scouting teams believe that she's warded the building against angels and other forms of detection."

"Do we know where?"

"No."

"Right, then have Gadreel make up a crash course in ward breaking to show the girls. Do we have any other hunters we can call for this?"

Atropos checked her book. "Garth might be willing to leave his pack for a few days to help, but his wife is expecting, so we can't be sure. Jody Mills is out; she's busy with the adoption papers for the vampire girl. Krissy and her team are on reserve still, then there are the freelance hunters we've contacted throughout the country."

"Call them up and ask if they want a piece of this."

While one angel was unequipped to kill a knight of hell, it turned out a garrison stabbing in unison had a much better chance. After the mortal strike team disabled the base's warding, Cas, leading the heavenly army, swooped in to finish the job.

Unfortunately, Crowley got away.

Deanna still chalked the operation up as a win.

...

"Amazons are an interesting case; their powers come through the worship of their goddess. Without the proper rituals performed, their progeny will revert to being humans. There's and interesting case study of the children of Hypolita and her human consort-"

"So our kids will be human?" interrupted Emma.

Henry nodded enthusiastically. "Should you still be capable of having them, then most definitely."

"Should?" The girl paled.

The man of letters, thoroughly seeped in research mode, didn't notice his audience's distress. "An Amazon's reproductive system is heavily tied in ritual. What happens when those rituals are no longer performed hasn't been studied very thoroughly in recent years." He looked up from the scroll, and blinked. "Are you all right?"

Emma's face was a twisted mask of gut wrenching sorrow. "Dee!" She cried, running away before Henry could try to comfort her.

Later, four young woman with tear stained eyes cuddled on the large memory foam mattress in their den-mother's room.

Deanna, sitting in the middle of the weeping puddle, carted her fingers through her girls's hair, humming Metallica under her breath.

...

...

A/N:

Why does no one ever seem to remember that Cain is Dean's infinitely great grandfather? It's legit cannon.

So...without the Mark of Cain angst, the next chapter kind of ran away with itself and turned into a crossover with Dark Angel.

Teaser: "I found him in a storm drain," Emma said, holding the skinny boy close to her side. "Can I keep him?"


	11. Chapter 11

...

...S9.5 AU

...

"I found him in a storm drain," Emma said, holding the skinny boy close to her side. "Can I keep him?"

Deanna sighed, and sent Atropos to fetch the shivering kid a blanket. When the child was thoroughly cocooned in flannel and eating a bowel of soup, the hunter took her adopted daughter aside.

"Emma, this isn't a good life for a little kid."

"Why? I grew up fine, and Mary and Jim are the happiest kids I've ever seen."

"You guys are special circumstances," the hunter tried to argue.

"Yeah, well so's Ben!"

Deanna frowned. "Just because you found him after a hunt doesn't mean that-"

"He said he was some kind of science experiment for the military before he escaped a few years ago." The Amazon's eyes flashed with red highlights. "They kept him in a box his whole life, just because they want some perfect little soldiers."

"Emma, calm down," Deanna laid a hand on the woman's shoulder, her stomach twisting into furious knots at the tale. "I know this is running close to the heart for you, but you need to stay calm, for Ben."

The young woman took a few steadying breaths. After a moment, her eyes returned to a more human appearance.

"Good girl." Deanna patted her shoulder. "Now, it's been a long night for everyone. I'll set up a cot in your room for Ben, and we can talk more in the morning. All right?"

Emma nodded, giving the hunter a quick hug before she left the room.

"Is she the Blue Lady?" the child whispered, wide green eyes following the hunter's retreating back.

"Who?" Emma said, gathering him into her arms.

"The Blue Lady. She helps you and makes sure you don't get sent to the basement with the 'nomalies."

The Amazon bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, grip tightening around the little body. "I suppose she's like the Blue Lady," she said carefully. "Deanna saved me when I was about your size. It's what she does; killing things helping people." She chuckled. "The family business."

...

"Hey, where's Emma?" Sam said, looking around the bunker, which was significantly less crowded than usual.

Deanna shrugged. "She took the other Amazons to break up an immoral military organization creating child soldiers."

"Oh right." He looked at his sister oddly. "And you didn't want a part of that at all?"

She looked up from the table, unimpressed. "I trust Emma to handle it. She's a big girl now."

"Uh hu. And the angels are gone because...?"

"They needed to stretch their wings before they got flabby, so I sent them to Wyoming."

"Where Emma and the girls are staging their operation."

The hunter threw a pen at him. "Shut up bitch."

...

"This place is more secure than the bunker," Amy reported, eyes monster red to better see in the dark. The Amazons couldn't risk turning on any lights during their stakeout of the Manticore facility, lest their prey catch onto their surveillance. "The only weak point we could find was the back field, and that's only when they let the kids out to train. We wouldn't be able to save more than a squad."

"That's no good, we need to be able to get them all in one go," Carol said, frowning. "Kayleigh broke onto their server and found protocols to blow the barracks if any of the children escape, or if the facility is compromised. That corroborates with what we learned interviewing Ben."

Their leader looked green. "That's sick."

The monsters exchanged a look. "Emma, I think we're in over our heads," Kayleigh, ever the voice of reason, said. "Maybe we should call Deanna."

"No."

"But-"

"I said no," Emma growled, instincts itching under her skin. "These children are ours to save. We are warriors, and if we dare to call ourselves mothers by the end of this, we have to take full responsibility all the way. Deanna has enough on her plate managing the rest of the Letters. This is our trial to overcome, to prove that we have what it takes to be what she was to us."

"Well we cant storm this fortress with just the four of us!"

"Perhaps we may be of assistance?" a new voice chimed in.

As one the four Amazons spun, claws out, and eyes flashing red.

An angel, wearing a mousy brunette in overalls waved back at them.

"Raziel, what are you doing here?" Emma said, as she and her sisters relaxed at the familiar face.

The woman smiled. "Domina sent us in case you required help."

"Don't let Deanna hear you call her that," Carol sniggered.

Raziel ignored the comment. "My garrison is at your disposal for the duration of this mission," she said to Emma.

The blonde refrained from expressing the relief flooding through her breast. "Awesome. Now, we've got the blueprints of the building, but we don't know how many kids they've got stashed in there..."

...

Mary stared at the intruder in her favorite library chair with all the unsettling weight a daughter of the angel of Thursday would muster.

He stared back, unnerved.

"I'm part angel," she shot out.

"I'm part cat," he replied in kind.

"I got wings and six pairs of eyes."

"I got... the ability to run really fast."

Mary smiled. "I like you. We should be friends!"

He tilted his head in confusion. "What?"

The nephilim tugged insistently at the older boy's hand. "Come on. Your Emma's baby now, so that makes us cousins."

...

"I was going through the old case notes, and we might have actually tangled with Manticore before."

"Really?"

Kayleigh nodded. "Around 2009 Garth had a run in with what he thought was a group of ghouls, but turned out to be some eugenic obsessed terrorists. He stopped them from setting off a bomb, and left a tip to the police."

"We sure these are the same guys?" Emma said.

Her sister nodded. "They killed a little kid. From the description, sounds like one of Ben's friends."

The amazon's eyes flashed red. "Those monsters!"

...

"Excuse me? Ma'am?"

Deanna looked up from her table of maps and smiled at the small pre-teen standing beside her. "Yeah kid?"

Ben carefully didn't meet her eyes, lips pressed nervously together. "Where's Miss Emma?"

"Your Momma's out rescuing the rest of your brothers and sisters."

"Who?" Ben said.

Deanna ran a hand over his stubbly head, where blonde hair was growing in. "Emma. She takes care of you, and Cas knows she loves you. That makes her your mother."

...

"Leader, we've got a problem," Carol said.

Emma looked up from the facility blueprints, marked up with sticky notes. "What?"

"Kayleigh found a file on the conditioning they put the kids through. Even if we rescue them, they won't want to come with us. They're programmed to want to go back to Manticore, and we don't look military enough to order them around. It would be like if a man tried to take us away from our den-mother when we were still growing."

The blonde Amazon swore.

"Abner!" Emma called. Immediately a kindly faced man with dark hair fluttered to her side, holding a clipboard and pen. "Who do we have, who is discreet, that I can send to do a full psych profile on the people in there?"

The angel communicated telepathically with his siblings. "Chamuel is the most accomplished in dream walking."

"Really?" The young commander's mind whirled with the new possibilities this presented. "Set up a meeting with her in the morning. I need to discuss whether she would be willing to communicate to the children what will happen. If they are expecting the raid and know who we are, they might be more willing to come with us."

Abner made a note. "Right away."

...

Sam frowned at the children. "You know, Ben looks an awful lot like Mary. They could be siblings."

Deanna shrugged. "It's probably coincidence."

Her brother looked over at the map spread out on the table. "What are you doing anyway? Is that a case?"

"Road trip," she said, tracing a backroad between the Grand Canyon and the everglade.

"To Orlando?" His voice wobbled with laughter.

"Cas has been watching too much daytime TV again, and wants to take the family on vacation," Deanna grinned fondly. "Dweeb somehow got us tickets for Disneyworld, then Charlie's taking us to Comi-con. She called up one of her cos-player friends, so the babies have both got these adorable little wing outfits. She even made a hat with Cas's four heads!"

Sam carefully covered his twitching mouth. "And you?"

"Sexy nurse, duh."

...

The angel tilted her head. "Some of the beings in there would make suitable vessels. I may be able to contact some of my non-corporeal siblings who wish to spend time on earth."

Emma's lips pressed together. "Those kids in there won't have a concept of saying no when someone gives them an order. That's not consent."

"We would gain valuable eyes inside the facility, as well as assuring the children that the plan is real, and not simply a figment of their minds."

The young woman clenched her fist in conflict, but nodded resolutely. "Fine. Do it."

...

Remiel was walking through the bunker. Normally the angel would simply fly to his next location, however he had just spent a few moments in the Memorial (as the bunker's inhabitants had begun to call the growing shrine of pictures to the fallen) and wished for a few moments of human contemplation.

His steps stopped when he heard violent thumps and whimpers just down the hall. Rounding the corner, the angel say the bunker's newest inhabitant seizing violently, his head banging against the plaster wall.

Remiel quickly reached for the boy, using his grace to calm his body's rebellion and temporarily fix the chemical imbalance causing his distress.

"Are you well?" he asked, when Ben's shivers stopped.

"Please don't tell anyone I have the shakes," the boy wept. "They'll find out I'm defective and send me away."

The angel frowned in confusion. "As I understand it, it is normal for humans to suffer from health problems. Deanna would not allow you to be cast away for such a reason."

"But I'm not normal," Ben said, breath coming fast. "I'm a transgenic. I'm not a person, I'm a soldier. Persons don't have barcodes on the back of their necks!"

Remiel's brows furrowed. "What does a body ornamentation have to do with whether you are a person?"

"It means I'm property." The boy's voice was muffled by his hands pressed against his face.

The angel tilted his head thoughtfully. Like a viper, his hand shout out to cover the back of child's neck. Ben didn't have enough time to do more than look up with tear stained eyes, before the hand was gone.

Remiel contemplated his palm, before tilting it to show the boy. Branded into the skin was the trangenic's serial number and bars. Ben's hands shot to the back of his neck, fingers searching.

"I took it from you. So now you're as much of a person as your soul says you are. You are free now too." He closed his hand into a fist, and when he opened it, the brand was gone in a flash of heavenly grace.

Fresh tears spilt down the child's face. "It's gone?"

The angel nodded.

Ben threw himself at the celestial being's waist, squeezing him so tightly that a human's bones would have broken.

"Thank you, sir." The boy's voice shook.

Remiel slowly wrapped his limbs around the tiny clinging body. The hungry look which occasionally crossed his features seemed to now be fulfilled.

"I was a soldier too, you know," he said softly.

Ben pulled back and wiped his cheeks, trying to regain his composure.

"Really sir?"

"Yes. We were discouraged from expressing aspects of humanity by our superiors. I did not know how to exist in any other manner, until Deanna found me."

"The Blue Lady," Ben whispered reverently.

The angel tilted his head. "She dislikes titles, though she holds many. Righteous Man, Mater, General, Domina- she only allows us to call her Deanna, though by my people's ways that is not all there is to her name."

"She helps everyone, doesn't she."

"Of course, that is her way. 'Saving people, hunting monsters. The family business.' "

"She helped me when I was in Manticore," the transgenic mumbled into the angel's shoulder. "When Ava got shot, and they told us not to cry."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Ben hiccuping, and Remiel rubbing circles on his back, in a motion he had seen other humans do to soothe children.

"Would you like to see where we remember those who have left us?" the angel asked.

A tiny head nodded, still pressed against his vessel's collarbone.

Remiel led the small boy to the memorial, which had grown exponentially since its initial creation weeks ago. Newspaper clippings of victims of supernatural attacks, those too late to be saved on a case, had plastered one corner by the door, but the angel took his companion to the most colorful collection.

"Mary drew this sun for my brother Ambriel. She perceived his true form to be that of plasma, similar to that contained within Sol." Remiel pointed to a river stone, attached to the wall by string run through a nail. "My sibling Dumah never took a vessel, but they held fondness for the weathering patterns of earth. This stone reminds me of our time together."

"Zack liked to hide under rocks," Ben said, clutching the angel's hand as he stared at the memorial. "And Max had dark brown hair, like wood."

"Would you like to put something up for them?"

The little boy hunched down in his shoulders. "What would I put, sir?"

"Anything, so long as it has meaning."

Ben bit his lip. The fingers not wrapped around Remiel's arm crept to the back of his head. The taller being smiled in understanding.

Laying his hand against the wall, a flash of grace ignited against the paint. When the angel drew his hand away, a familiar serial number and coded bar was left behind.

Fresh tears ran down the little boy's cheeks.

Remiel let the child bask in the freedom to expression emotions, till his young soul was worn out. He then led him to the bunker's kitchen, and got him a drink.

"I have been experimenting with the varied beverages humans refer to as tea," the angel said at the child's questioning stare. "I have been informed of the biological calming properties of some, which can be advantageous in times of psychological stress."

The boy sniffed the mug curiously, pink tongue peaking between his lips to test the warm liquid.

Remiel sat across from him, savoring the dance of molecules on his vessels tongue as he drank.

"S'good," Ben purred, nose practically inside the cup.

"I'm rather fond of catnip too." The angel smiled.

...

The transgenic known only to himself as Mole had led a horrible existence. Of course, compared to some of his siblings, he was pretty lucky. However, in a place where 'lucky' meant seeing tomorrow, without seeing your insides on a slab, his life was pretty horrible.

He supposed it was only natural that his mind finally broke under all the stress.

"You are not mad," the voice in his head insisted, in a soft tone of voice the transgenic had never encountered. It sent pleasant shivers down his scales and calmed his heartbeat, making him want to listen forever.

"You are not mad," the voice insisted again. "You are chosen."

"For what?" Mole mumbled tiredly.

"To help save your siblings from this place."

That made the transgenic sit up. "What do I have to do?"

"Say yes."

The Mole agreed without another conscious thought. The next thing he knew, warm desert breezes wrapped around him, rocking his mind into a soothing slumber.

"Be at peace," the voice whispered, "And I shall sing thee to thy rest."

The lizard-man's eyes opened, flaring holy blue in their depths.

...

"I have gained the trust of the transgenics in the location known as the basement," Sariel said, lizard eyes blinking in the dim starlight. "Those who are capable will follow me when the time comes. Those whose minds or bodies were beyond repair I have escorted to heaven."

Emma closed her eyes for a momentary prayer to the fallen victims of this horrible facility. She looked back up at the angel's scaly face. "You did the right thing. They suffered enough in that abhorrent place."

The angel inclined his head. "Several of my siblings have also taken vessels similar in characteristics to my own. Five of the guards and a janitor have also consented. We are ready to assist however we can."

"Awesome." The Amazon took a breath, shoulders set in the taught line of leadership. "Have three of your team report to Carol. She's working with Raziel on planting explosives for the facility's demolition. Those with more human appearances should go to Amy, who's organizing the evacuation plan."

Sariel nodded, and vanished in a flutter of wings.

...

"They put cat bits into my DNA," Ben mumbled into his milk. "The X5's were the first to look so normal."

Remiel tilted his head. "Humans put much stock into physical appearances. I don't understand it."

"That's because you look so normal too!" the boy blurted. His face paled the instant the sound waves left his lips.

The angel frowned. "This isn't my true form," he said patting his chest. "This is a vessel. My real form would burn out a human's eyes, or at the very least drive them to madness."

"What? Why?" Ben's eyes were wide. "What do you look like?"

Remiel hummed, drawing out the child's interest in a teasing interaction he had seen between Deanna and her children. "The closest approximation I can guess that a human can perceive would be..." He tapped a thumb to his lips.

"Yeah?" The boy leaned forwards expectantly.

"Two of my heads are wolves, neither of which exist on earth any more. Structurally my wings are more like a bat's, though the feathers are somewhere between octarine and what the inside of a daffodil sounds like. I have many more limbs than you would expect, but fewer than what you're thinking, and my configuration does not lend itself well to bipedalism."

The milk sat completely forgotten in Ben's hand. "Really sir?"

The angel nodded, nudging the glass closer to his charge. "Yes."

...

"I am capable of driving an automobile," Gadreel assured cooly.

"Yeah, well these dozen buses are going to be full of confused para-military pre-teens." Emma kneaded her forehead with a fist. "Abner, has Samandriel found a place to house the kids yet? We can't take them back to the bunker all at once."

The angel consulted his notepad. "He secured an abandoned property called Camp Chippewa in Montana. The cabins have been repaired, and he has acquired sustenance and clothing to accommodate the evacuees."

"Right," the Amazon took a deep breath. "Operation Echidna will commence at midnight."

...

The operation went off without a major hitch.

The transgenics, guided by weeks of dreaming and promises of structure without the inhuman treatment of Manticore, discreetly gathered in their bunkers, while the assorted angels flew them out in units to waiting buses just outside of the facility.

Some had to be carefully retrieved from the medical and psych wings. Those poor souls were immediately taken to the surprisingly well equipped field hospital at Camp Chippewa.

When the last innocent was loaded up and driving away, Emma grinned at her sisters. She waved a detonator box invitingly in her hand. "Who wants to do the honors?"

...

Weeks later, after something of a routine was established for the rescued transgenics to feel comfortable with a marginal amount of autonomy, Emma returned to he bunker to fetch her son.

After being smothered in hugs by her adoptive mother and uncle, she found Ben in the kitchen, drinking what smelt like tea with an angel wearing a young brown haired man.

When he saw her, the little soldier jumped to his feet and saluted smartly. The Amazon felt a warm spark flood her heart, and enveloped him in a hug.

"Hey there kitten, sorry I was gone so long. Who's your friend?"

"His name is Remiel. He's been looking after me," Ben said, snuggling into her shoulder.

Emma considered the angel. "Has he."

"Ben is an exceptional child," Remiel said, muscles on his back stretching.

The Amazon hummed thoughtfully, cheek pressed against her son's fuzzy head.

...

"Ben, this is your twin," Emma said gently, laying a hand on the sleeping boy's forehead. Immediately his terrors calmed. "He was in cognitive reconditioning when we found him, and can't wake up yet."

The transgenic looked apprehensively at the mirror of his own face. "Ma'am," he said, voice forcibly steady. "Are you going to keep him instead of me?"

Emma looked at him askant. "Of course not! Oh, kitten, come here." She reached over to wrap her son in her arms. "Neither of you will replace the other! I fell in love with the both of you the minute I found you. You're both my boys."

Ben pressed his face into the Amazon's collar bone, breath evening as he inhaled her familiar scent of salt, steel, and predator.

...

The Men of Letters's bunker, while capable of comfortably holding a small family of seven and uncomfortably being able to house six more Amazon teenagers, it was not equipped to also house a small army of even smaller genetically altered child soldiers, nor their older animalistic looking precursors.

Luckily, Deanna literally had legions of angels begging to be at her beck and call. After Atropos heard the problem, she immediately scheduled for everyone to be out of the bunker for a week.

When Deanna and her entourage returned, it was to find two new underground floors full of bedrooms. Half were painted a soft blue, and the other a cheery yellow.

She revoked the angel's access to daytime TV and Martha Stuart after that.

...

"No."

Balthazar rolled his eyes. "Look, if you want to explain this whole humanity thing to a bunch of beings with no concept of it, then I'm your angel."

"No." Deanna chanted.

"Love, Atropos and Abner both called me individually to help, especially after my stirling work with those cupids in Mexico."

"They formed a sex cult in the Andes!" the hunter yelled.

"Yeah, but no one suspected them of being more than human, did they?"

The hunter's teeth ground together audibly. "No."

"Look, Deanna." Balthazar's normally jovial countenance turned serious. "Despite what you thin, it's not your choice; it's Emma's. Those are her people that she saved, and she asked me for my help."

...

Emma kissed the tops of the twin's heads. Ben grinned happily, while Alec flailed away, flushing scarlet in embarrassment. The Amazon laughed, snagging the pre-teen in a one armed hug, which devolved into a cat-pile when Ben tackled his brother down too.

Castiel held his wife close.

"Our little girls are all grown up," she sighed into his tan coat.

"Mortals have a tendency to change the most in the moments you look away."

"Cas," she sniffed, punching him in the shoulder. "You don't say things like that aloud."

...

...

A/N:

Who saw that Dark Angel crossover coming? Certainly not me! I was browsing my favorite tags list, and then Emma was like, "Hey, monster kids! I call dibs!"

So...yeah. Amazons raising transgenics.

Camp Chippewa is a reference to the summer camp Wednesday Addams and Pugsley were sent to in Addams Family Values. Another awesome movie you should see. :)

Echidna was the mother of Chimera in greek mythology.

...

...Epilogue

...

Emma turned Camp Chippewa into a satellite base for the increasing collection of hunters, angels, and monsters brought under the flag of hunting down evil. Remiel respectfully asked to accompany her. She gave him a long, long, look, before saying yes.

Most of the transgenics, used to a sparse military lifestyle and uncomfortable around 'normal' civilians, went with Emma too, eager to put their skills to the test against the various creatures which went bump in the night. A few, mostly those with less than human appearances, stayed behind at the bunker. They were endlessly fascinated with Deanna's entourage of angels, who took great delight in describing their true forms to the transgenics, in as much as a human could perceive them.

Atropos and Abner coordinated to increase the hunting organization's response time to threats. They even approached Deanna with plans to set up another safe house in Arizona to more thoroughly handle threats in the southwest.

The general gave their plan the green light without looking too hard at what she was signing, too preoccupied with the calls pouring in from the various Vatican, Canadian, and European supernatural organizations, who wanted to re-establish contacts in the States, after the last major organization went radio silent in the 1950s.

Sam was giddy to play ambassador, having finally given his role as head researcher fully over to Henry in exchange for slightly more time on the field. Deanna still had yet to let her brother live down finally growing sick of researching.

Castiel contented himself with looking after his children. Jim had begun to express a prodigious talent for smiting, much the same way his sister had translocation. Occasionally, the seraph would fly back to heaven for a case, but these trips were becoming less common as the long line of trials dwindled.

Bobby was the same as ever, if a bit more grizzled and grey around the ears. He had yet to accept Deanna's invitations to live at the bunker, citing his need for privacy. That never stopped the groups of hunters and angels from crowding at his door.

The angel Sariel discovered a passion for scavenger hunts, and could usually be found in the junk yard with a laundry list of spell components and books the old hunter required. The lizard-man would flit across the globe, sometimes on the wing, sometimes using more mundane methods of travel. Rumors of scaled chameleon aliens increased exponentially. Last anyone heard of him, he had met up with some friend of the Doctor, and left on a short vacation to expand his cultural horizons.

At the height of Balthazar's business's popularity, the angel grew bored. He gave the host his two week's notice, told them not to send him any more jobs on human-heaven interaction lessons, and went off to join the Cupids in South America.

Mary and Jim grew up into fine nephilim, well adjusted and loved in ways neither of their parents ever experienced, but never failed to deliver. Mary considered attending school in a different universe, just so the host of angels who dogged her family's step would stop being so helpful all the time. She's stuck between Hogwarts and a place called Ouran. Ben is determined to keep her out of trouble wherever she ends up.

Heaven continued on its new path of trial by jury, and everyone was all the happier for it. Even Raphael didn't mind too much, after the nihilist found a liking for earth thanks to the miraculously hedonistic cult, and their ambrosia distilled brews.

The Colonel just thinks all the bipedal beings around him are silly.

Thus the round-world turned.

...

The end.

...

...

A/N:

Mary is a month past 4yrs old by the end of S9. Jim is about 2yrs old. Imagine him learning the word No, while having 'prodigous smiting talents.' That's gonna be fun.


End file.
